Lucifer Manifesto
by SqueakKills
Summary: AU;Sasuke murders his wife and commits suicide, bringing him face to face with the Devil himself. Not only does he come to terms with his own demons, he /becomes/ them. Preying off of humanity, he comes to find Naruto, and although forbidden falls in love
1. Chapter 1

There was blood on the sheets. It all happened so fast he was hardly able to keep up. One thing lead to another and his girlfriend was dead, as was everything about her. Her deafening, nagging screech, the way she fought, the sharpness of her nails and the adoration in her eyes. What was left of Karin's face stared mutely up at him, half of it marred by the bullet hole that shattered her cheek. There were smatterings of red on the wall and headboard above her. In a sickening display of affection, Sasuke propped her head up on the pillow, gore spilling derisively from the wound and onto his hands. He tucked her beneath the sheets stained all hues of pink and red and brown, since it had been at least two hours since the blood was first let. The colors danced in front of his tired eyes and Karin seemed to be smiling at him, even in death. The gun felt cold in his hands - he wasn't sure why, but since he had picked it up it's temperature had not changed. No heat had been transferred from his warm, sweaty palm to the cool metal that held the iron-like taste of judgment. Karin had taken the brunt of his insanity, and now he was to be judged. Placing the mouth of the gun to his temple in the universal symbol for suicide, he pulled the trigger. Sasuke was dead.

--

In front of him lay a gray, stark hall that didn't seem to end. The entrance to the passage ahead kept drifting listlessly in front of him, sometimes close, sometimes far, but either way always just out of reach. He wasn't sure that he wanted to cross the threshold, not knowing for certain what was inside, but his body moved continuously forward, unable to resist the magnetic pull of whatever happened to lie in wait.

Just when the passage seemed to extend far beyond any point he could ever traverse on foot, he lost his balance, slamming through the nondescript archway and landing flat on his face. His nose started to bleed profusely, and he clutched at it with his hand, pain still coursing through him as he struggled to his feet. What he saw in front of him wasn't what he had expected. It was a waiting room.

The small room was similar to a waiting room in a pediatrics ward, except the seats were filled with positively gruesome beings. He felt his insides crawl as a man stumbled through the gateway behind him, holding a nail gun with four or five nails protruding from his skull. The only seat left in the room was next to this man, and he instinctively sat down, holding his nose to stop the flow of blood. It had been reduced to a steady trickle.

"That doesn't look too good..." Sasuke hadn't noticed the girl about his age on his other side. He had been gaping at the nail-headed man for too long to pay attention to anything else.

Surprised by her milky voice, he turned to face her, distracted by the thin curtain of long, black hair that covered the visible side of her face. Then he noticed the needle and the thin elastic band tied around her upper arm. Heroin?

She saw him staring. "I liked needles. A little bit too much. But I think you're worse off than I am."

/Liked? Why is she talking in past tense?/

The raven answered curtly, holding his swollen nose. "It's just a nosebleed."

"I wasn't talking about that. I mean, your head."

Sasuke let the disgusting reality wash over him, slowly reaching up and touching his temple, feeling the congealed blood and the perfect hole judgment had created that had blown out the back of his skull. His hands were shaking.

/This is what death is like./

"I'm Haku. I've been waiting here for a long while now. Who are you?"

"S-Sasuke..." He swallowed. He could feel himself sweating. "Isn't Haku a boy's name?" His tone was nervous, solely trying to distract himself from the blood leaking from his head and devoting his attention to the drug addict beside him.

"Silly, I /am/ a boy."

It possibly the strangest thing he had ever experienced, but he guessed that all humans did, one way or another. Something felt odd, though. As he looked at the sixteen-or-so men and women that resided in the room, illuminated by a single, flickering bulb in the center of it, he was able to come to the conclusion that these weren't normal deaths. From Haku, the nail-gun man, and the chronic smoker with a cigarette dangling from her lips, to the small boy with bleeding wrists and a sprinkling of gunshot-to-the-head patrons like Sasuke, there was a similarity.

Have you guessed what it was?

"How long have you been waiting here?" Sasuke inquired, wrenching his gaze away from a woman who's eye was hanging listlessly from the socket. She smiled at Sasuke, obviously intrigued by how pretty he was, even with a slovenly wound on the side of his face. Feeling his stomach pulsate wretchedly, he kept his eyes on the effeminate boy. He wasn't something as ugly to look at.

"I don't know. A very long time. Years and years, it feels like. But you're lucky. You came at the last minute. Something is happening to us soon."

From this small sentence, Sasuke deduced that the group of people in here were a select few. Obviously suicide victims, but there was something else about each of them that must have placed them in this room. Perhaps it was the fact that they were all cold-blooded like Sasuke, killing their wives or strangling their children. Sasuke didn't know. He was intelligent, but this shit was out of his realm. How could he reason logically about something he had never believed in?

The room had grown very cold. Sasuke was still confused as to how he could feel anything at all. It seemed that his emotions, thoughts, and physical feelings were still in tact. Well, every feeling except for the one that probably mattered the most:

Pain.

The flickering light in the center of the room was struggling, desperately, to stay on, as if it could feel the ominous fear of the patrons that resided within. If the room went dark, what would happen then? What were they all waiting for? Sasuke could feel Haku shivering next to him. His great, big eyes shone in the inevitable darkness. The light was gone. A voice, smooth and visceral like water, rose above the stagnant air in the room in a soft hiss.

"I'm sure you all know why you're here...It's just a matter of time before you find out what you're going to do. I'm giving you a choice you never would have had, had you been a good, God fearing Christian like your dear old grandmother, or the man you always thought was psychotic when he screeched from atop a soap box and distributed Jesus flip books. The choice is this. You can either join me for an eternity, and continue to leave your mark on this world. But it will be a scorch mark. A burn. Your life will be painful, hard, and miserable. You will do only what evil calls for you to do. You will continue to murder and maim as you have done in the past, but with no outlet. There will be no death or forgiveness waiting for you."

There was a long silence. The room's occupants waited with bated breath for the blood-curdling voice to continue.

"And then, the other option. You can rest. I will lay you down forever, and you will become the earth that suffocates your graves. The choice is easy enough. Redemption for those who wish they hadn't died, or peace for those who knew they chose right. You have fifteen minutes."

The light flickered back on, and the cold faded.

Sasuke looked desperately at Haku for some sort of answer to a question he hadn't even asked. The boy was smiling softly.

"Well," Haku asked quietly. "What are you going to do?"

Sasuke swallowed, shocked, appalled that Haku would even ask him so blunt of a question. Of course, he would take the softer route, curl up in a ball six feet underground and sleep forever. But that thought sent shivers up his spine. Had he done the right thing in killing himself? There was so much unfinished business he had to attend to. His brother. His dead family. They would be so disappointed in him. How could he expect to join them in eternal happiness disguised by nothingness? He didn't deserve it.

The seconds ticked by much too fast for his liking. He could tell, just by looking at Haku, that he had already had his mind made up.

"I-I don't know. What are you going to do?"

"There's nothing left for me here. My savior is dead. He's waiting for me. By the look on your face, it seems that you weren't exactly ready to leave the world behind, were you?"

How could someone so much younger than him be so certain? How could Haku know so much about the world that he was ready to give it up?

Ten minutes had already passed. Two doors he hadn't noticed before stood to his left, behind a ratty looking reception desk. There was a girl there, almost perfectly normal looking. It startled him that he hadn't noticed any of this before. It was as if it had all appeared out of thin air. A few shocked expressions around him suggested that it just had. The girl had pink hair, and she was chewing on a piece of bubble gum. There was a thick layer of eyeliner around her green eyes. Her fingernails were black, and filed down to sharp points that mimicked claws. Sasuke swallowed. She winked.

Four minutes.

What would he do? Which would he choose? Live a life of pain as a result of his disgrace? Or take advantage of something he didn't deserve?

Three minutes.

Haku had already stood. He waved meekly to Sasuke as he moved to the desk, where the lines were beginning to form. The girl spoke briefly in whispers to Haku and directed him to the right.

Two minutes.

Sasuke stood. His destiny had already been decided. Sasuke had always been a prideful being, and it was this factor that was ordering that he make the right choice...Or, the only choice that Uchiha pride would let him make. Sweating profusely, he resolutely decided that he must obey the teachings of the Uchiha name. Self-discipline. He found his body jerking him towards the door on the left, while his heart ached longingly for pretty little Haku and his right door. Even the pink haired girl looked surprised.

One minute.

She leaned forward and grabbed his arm firmly in her clawed hands. Smiling shyly, she said, "We're going to be spending a lot of time together."

The doors creaked open. Sasuke felt like screaming. The passage was endless. It was as if he was being shoved forcefully through the doorway, and he suspected he was, by the girl's deft, sharp hand. It was too late to turn back now. He was falling into a darkness so thick it felt like his body was being strangled. He felt parts of him being torn away, and new parts being added. The tips of his fingers and toes felt like they were splitting. His tail bone ripped though the skin at his back, and his shoulder blades felt like they were stretching as new bones grew in their place. He felt the hole in his head sealing. Then emptiness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:**

wow! i already got a ton of story alerts in the first few hours this has been up, so i hope you guys keep reading! this chapter is a bit different from the first, but hopefully it explains a lot more about the world i have in my head. this whole thing is very anti-god, so i hope you all don't think i'm a satanist. i'm just curious. the whole thing concerning life and death intrigues me, as i hope it does you. i also want you to know that this is NOT WHAT I BELIEVE. i, honestly, don't believe in anything. this is something i completely made up, inspired by an old LotR AU that i read when i was younger but could never forget.

please r&r! i don't know how i feel about this chapter especially. is it necessary? do you like it? etcetc.

thanks! (and there's obviously much gnarly, bloody, boyluv to come)

-Squeak

**Disclaimer:**

all currently named characters property of Masashi Kishimoto! ;D

--

"Uchiha Sasuke."

"What, WHAT, for the last fucking time, I can't stand this stupid shit anymore. You set me free like this and tell me to wreak havoc, and I do, and then you hold me back. What am I for?"

"This was supposed to be a punishment. Treat it like one."

The dark eyed creature glared hungrily in the direction of his Lord, the only God that truly existed, the God who had given him a chance to redeem himself in the guise of torture. His God was Lucifer himself, the great Beelzebub, a demonic, feral creation of man that, over time, had become real. So real that it hurt to look upon him, and burned your eyes as black as coal. There was something different about Uchiha Sasuke, though. His eyes, even when human, were already /that/ black.

Hell looked like a stone fortress. The ceiling was arched with flying buttresses, and all windows were stained glass in a devastating shade of crimson. It all looked, mockingly, like an immense church. To top it all off, the Devil's throne sat beneath a giant crucifix, suspended upside down against the wall. In an what seemed like a never ending stone hall, almost all of humanity was imprisoned. Men were chained to one side, women chained to the other. All had punishments unique to their crimes. Out of all of them, Sasuke felt like the prostitutes had it the worst, forever raped by painful objects that even now, as a demon, he would never want to touch. Everyone was naked, raw and bleeding. It was like a scene from a horror movie, but he was used to it by now. His eyes were currently transfixed upon Lucifer, who was always partially hidden in shadow. His God's red, shining eyes snaked out from the darkness, and penetrated like needles. Sasuke had gotten used to this physical impression, too. He rather liked it. It reminded him of Haku, whom he'd never forgotten. When he was on the surface he often visited the boy's grave. It was funny, but after he died he found that Haku was buried in the same graveyard as he, and the rest of the Uchiha clan were. Perhaps it was just coincidence? But Sasuke now believed a higher power had been watching over him all along.

"I'm sorry, my Lord. My mistake."

"You're lucky I like you. Now go. You must be getting hungry. But pay attention. You know an incubus can only be noticed by the humans he kills."

Sasuke nodded and turned away. The pink haired girl, whom he now knew as Haruno Sakura, giggled at his back. She was the Devil's left-hand woman. Anyone educated in religion knows the significance of the left side, especially in regards to Satan. It was the side from which he fell from God, through the Earth and into Hell. It was the reason that old, Christian school houses forced the women to sit on the left side of the classroom, since they were sent by Lucifer to distract young boys and lead them down the path of sin. It was the reason that left-handed people were considered cursed, or witches, and murdered, and for such a silly thing as a side that everyone had. Anyone can turn out bad. Demons just help them choose which path to take.

Sasuke had come a long way from his blessed Deathday. He lived in a world now where power was measured in tails. Literally. Each tail you grew represented, to put it bluntly, a level up in power. Sasuke had four tails. They were long and thin, black and tipped with arrow-heads that not only looked sharp, but could cut through almost anything. His nails were the same way, long and thin like knives, and could pierce the thickest flesh, pull back the ribs and expose the heart inside. From his shoulder-blades protruded the most peculiar wings. Their span was about six feet, black and leathery, tipped with sharp, feral points. It was all very bat-like. His canine teeth were so large they protruded over his bottom lip. His skin was an even milkier ivory than before, pale, and exposing a network of thin, purple veins that snaked up his neck and tapered off around his chin. He was abominably beautiful, to say the least.

He was also an Incubus, male form of the Succubus. Food and drink did not please him, and only the heat and energy from sex satisfied his insatiable appetite. Of course, he had not chosen what demon to become. The Devil chose for him, but it was apparent that he had picked correctly. Getting women was always easy for Sasuke, but never had something like this happened before. The reason he'd angered his king was because he'd had sex with a man. It wasn't the gender of the human that was the problem, however. It was that he'd had sex with the same man...Twice.

It wouldn't have been an issue if the Devil had not found out. He had been human once too, and he was not perfect. Sasuke had confided secretly in Sakura and he had overheard. It was strange how gossipy and dramatic Hell could be, amongst superiors. It was almost as if nothing had changed, if not for the rows of suffering people and the fact that the officials all had wings. Sasuke smiled to himself, realizing this for the umpteenth time, but his brief smugness soon faded when /his/ face permeated the back of his mind.

He was blond, of strong build, with a spiraling tattoo on his perfect, tanned stomach. Cutting into his flesh was like slicing butter, but the best part was watching the blood simmer to the top and feeling the strange creature rub up against his throbbing erection. Sasuke had never seen anything like it, that one human could enjoy this pain so much, and understand Sasuke so fully it confused him. The last thing he'd whispered when Sasuke had left the second night was, "I want to feed you. Please come back."

Sasuke sat down and folded his wings neatly, swallowing. It had been a while since he was rattled like this, by a human who's name he knew he'd never be able to get out of his head until he had fucked him again.

Uzumaki Naruto.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** hello! i finally updated. / sorry to those of you who have been waiting. i just started school and never really had the time or motivation to get back into this again. but i found this file kicking around on my computer and had some time to kill, so i finished it up. yayyyy. i still really like this story and the direction it's taking. read and review!! ;

-Squeak

**Disclaimer:** not minesz. D8

It had been a normal day for Naruto, for the most part. Putting items back on the shelves, lifting boxes garbed in his little green Shaw's apron and hat, along with a pair of jeans and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He worked in a grocery store, not at the counter, but pushing food around in a metal cart and restocking. He did a lot of manual labor in the store room, clambering up on a giant ladder and passing large boxes down to other workers, and then helping them wheel out store products and the like.

Then the day changed. The boring, twelve hour routine was interrupted by something he saw. It was like something from a dream he'd had, a flash of wings and long, curling tails, attached to a very dark looking young man around his age. He dropped the soup can he'd been holding and looked again. At the end of the isle, a pair of tunnel-black eyes were staring mutely at him, but the otherwordly possessions that Naruto thought the creature had obtained were gone. The raven-haired man was anything but normal looking, either way, and Naruto felt the strange urge to stop what he was doing and touch himself. He swallowed thickly, picking up the can with trembling fingers. Focusing as entirely as he could on placing the soup in the appropriate place, he tried to ignore the burning feeling in his stomach, as well as the molten gaze that was burying deep into the back of his skull like a pair of fat tapeworms.

Once Naruto had finished restocking and the cart had emptied, he turned to glance furtively at the end of the isle, to see if the kid was still there. As expected, he was. The blond almost felt like throwing up, despite the fact that he hadn't eaten anything that day. Food was hard to come by on his salary. At least breakfast and lunch were.

He pushed the cart down the isle, dying to get away from the thick tension that had randomly manifested in the shadow of a young man, a feeling that baffled Naruto so much so that it was hard to walk. He felt as if his hands and neck were charred by a curling iron as an abominable torture mechanism. Naruto swore to himself that he'd never felt this bad in his life. He needed something and he needed it now. Discarding his cart he disappeared into the back of the store, jamming his hand into one of the pockets and pulling out a small plastic bag. Inside the bag was a half-crushed pill that he crammed into his mouth, licking the plastic clean of any residue, dropping the bag at his feet and leaving it there without any intention of picking it up. The storeroom was empty now, most of his coworkers having punched out as the sky darkened and the artificial lights flickered to life on the street.

The trip would start soon. He had an hour to kill.

--

Naruto crawled hesitantly up from the glass-covered ground, tongue parched as if his mouth was filled to the brim with sand. His palm had been bleeding steadily for a while now, but he didn't notice, the inherent shaking of inanimate objects preventing him from concentrating on one spot. The loud bump of the bass inside of the club made him want to dance, touching his skin and reverberating in his ears, but he couldn't get up. He hadn't been drinking enough water, and he almost felt motion sickness seize his stomach and squeeze. Vomit splattered out of his mouth.

It was only by chance he looked up, the E in his system demolishing his perception and making him feel like he was someone else; Something else. It opened his eyes and tilted his chin back, feeling the presence of something so powerful it was almost painful...Something more than a drug couldn't possibly comprehend. Something ethereal.

In the back of Naruto's mind he was sure he recognized him: Black eyes, somber, unchangeable face, tight mouth, long, dark hair and ivory pale skin. The icy, brooding look gave the blond goosebumps, made him forget how pathetic he looked and how tired he was. He felt a cold, thin hand bury itself in his hair and play with it listlessly, as if the other full well knew what Naruto was on and how good it felt. His spine tingled and a small moan escaped his dry lips. He felt his body double over to rest his sweat drenched head against a leg clad in a dark, tight jean, against his the will of his mind but completely encompassing the will of his heart.

The hand continued to caress spots on Naruto's head that he didn't even know he had, spots that felt so good it almost seemed to hurt, seemed like such a sin he almost wanted it to stop. But the overwhelming pulsing of blood throbbing in between his legs made him yearn for more. His hands shot up to the angel's waist of their own accord, -angel, that's what he'd decided to call him- gripping the hem of a black t-shirt and lifting himself to his feet. His fingers slipped, he started to fall, blue eyes filled with pained, remarkably appropriate tears.

But an arm caught him then, latching around his waist and seizing a sharp hold on his lean stomach, pulling him so close that Naruto couldn't recognize his own body anymore. The street was dark and empty, but all Naruto could see were those black, heart-wrenching eyes. He closed his own lids at the sight of them. He couldn't look, it burned too much.

And suddenly he found his body plastered against the cold brick, hitting his head so hard he saw little flickers of light squirm in and out of his vision. He felt a thumb grace the corners of his mouth, a firm hand still wrapped tightly around his waist. There was a mouth at his throat, gnawing, sucking so harshly he could feel his neck purpling. And then something happened.

He felt teeth grazing his neck, but not normal, flat...human...teeth. They were sharp and brutal, and Naruto felt chills run down the length of his spine as he realized the likeness they had to a dog's canines. His eyes shot open and he tried to push the offender off, but found that his arms had become impossibly weak. Or the other had become impossibly strong. When he had regained focus, the angel he was looking at before had disappeared, replaced by a creature with leathery wings and a crooked smirk. The face had remained the same, but the hair had grown an impossible length, wings had sprouted from the shoulder blades and through the back of his shirt, now tattered and covered in his own blood. Thin, purple veins snaked up his chest and neck, and terrible claws left fresh, bleeding welts where Naruto was being held.

He tried to scream but no sound came out, trembling in fear as his trip spiraled downwards, a rogue tail curling around his thigh. Naruto felt his own blood leak from somewhere near his collarbone. He thought he was going to faint.

But somehow, the allure was still there, the thick, sexually charged atmosphere, so heavy he couldn't breathe or see straight. And the creature didn't waist time. The "Angel" flipped Naruto over and pressed him belly down against the wall. The long, thin nails raked over the sensitive areas of Naruto's pelvis, slicing him open in long, thin lines that hardly bled but burned impossibly. He whimpered groggily. The E just made everything more intense. He couldn't distinguish pain from pleasure, and he felt his body arch against the sensation. His jeans hung somewhere around his ankles, and his boxers followed. The cold air against his hot skin shocked him, erection pressed against the wall. If this had been another time, another place, Naruto would be struggling fiercely to get away. But it was something about this...thing that was tearing him apart that made it not matter, that made him feel beautiful and empty, waiting, begging to be swallowed.

The pain as the raven-haired angel stretched his opening with the head of his cock was excruciating, but Naruto didn't seem to mind. He didn't make a sound. Tears swelled quickly to the corners of his eyes and wet his cheeks. There was a hard slapping sound in time with the impatient thrusts, slippery and hot, as he was mercilessly pounded again and again. The lights had taken over his vision now, squirming in and out of sight, more and more blood being spilled, empty, filled, empty again.

When the creature came, it ended, abruptly, startlingly. A hand closed around Naruto's throat and the gruff sounds coming from the other seemed to amplify. Naruto realized he hadn't been breathing, and as he fell to the ground his lungs hitched and he spluttered and coughed. There was blood on his lips and a thick track of red dripping from somewhere within his sweat drenched hair.

His blue eyes opened, as if searching for an answer- something that would let him die then and there and he would be perfectly okay with it. He didn't know why, but he felt like he was floating. There was a voice in his ear. It was beautiful, low, serious, shrouded in shadow and flowing as smooth as water.

"I could kill you now."

And then blackness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note: i tried to make this chapter longer. i had fun. i thought it was cute. 8D**

**Disclaimer: Kishizzz.**

There was no noise. It had started to rain.

Sasuke had no idea why he did it, or what compelled him to go back. The limp, shivering, bleeding human at his feet certainly had nothing to do with it. He

/couldn't/ have anything to do with it. It was just some left over conscience that Sasuke had retained from when he was still alive, or alive in the sense that he needed conventional things to survive.

He hadn't killed him. He pitied the creature, but was mortified by a feeling he could barely remember enduring. He couldn't fully comprehend the emotion he felt, let alone any emotion at all. But all the same, the feelings were there. And that troubled Sasuke. As well as the fact that he could even feel troubled at all.

So he'd turned back. There was something about the blonde that /made/ him want to turn back, maybe muster up what little strength the fucker had left and help him get home.

Help? That was a strange word.

Regardless, when he saw the pair of dazed, harrying blue eyes gazing at him achingly, he reached down and held out his hand. And no matter what, he couldn't shake the distinct itch under his skin: the feeling that he was being watched.

The blonde squirmed sourly away from his extended fingers, which Sasuke assumed was because he'd left him half-alive and shivering on the ground to die. The blonde reminded him of a cat he used to have which he hadn't remembered until now. Being a supernatural creature from Hell did that to you. It erased memories that held any sort of delightful, petty happiness and enhanced the dark ones. It reminded you why you were there.

He swallowed heavily. This frightened him. How could someone so worthless, something that he'd been dying to eat and then forget forever, bring back a memory he would have never remembered no matter how long his eternity was?

The cat had been orange. He recalled the day he'd acquired it like it was yesterday, mewling pitifully on the sidewalk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sasuke used to lurk there when he was younger, at a place called Death By Audio. Every Saturday after work he would pay ten dollars, smoke a joint and go inside and listen to all manner of noise, the screaming, thrashing, somber tones pummeling his ears until he thought he couldn't hear any longer. He'd met Karin there, but that came later.

Sasuke always had /people/. Not that he liked any of them, but they were always there, for show. He went everywhere alone, and everywhere someone knew him. They were always girls, telling him how beautiful he was, how he should quit smoking- he wouldn't age well. Now, Sasuke, being who he was, would simply blow a puff of curling smoke in their faces, and mutter something like, "I hope you die from my secondhand," and wander off. He had always been /alone/.

Drunk, high, and tired, Sasuke would leave the small, underground venue, rarely with a girl on his arm, and head to a club, or if he was ready to call it a night, stumble onto the A or the 6 train and return to his Chinatown apartment on Canal street. Sasuke was half Japanese, and the rent was cheap there, so no one ever asked questions. On his way home one night, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Assuming it was a rat, he ignored it and continued to walk. It wasn't until he saw the animal again that he turned around and eyed the sidewalk behind him suspiciously. His blurred, hazy vision caught sight of a pair of wide eyes peeking out at him from behind an iron fence surrounding an apartment complex. It was a kitten.

The small, jittery creature squirmed out from underneath the bars and simply sat in front of Sasuke's boots, meowing loudly and pawing at the cement.

"You look hungry," crooned a drunken Sasuke, squatting down where he was a beckoning the tiny thing with his finger. The cat responded almost instantly with a sharp swipe, nicking the side of Sasuke's finger and drawing blood. Sasuke hissed, and the kitten hissed back. Standing up, realizing the cat would rather snarl at him then be pet, he turned his back on the thing and continued to walk.

He got about ten yards before a pang of guilt struck him. The kitten was all alone. It was getting cold. It had no food, no way to support itself, and it would probably die. He was about to turn around and go back, but to his surprise, he almost stepped on it. The kitten had followed him, batting at a rogue, untied shoelace.

"Cat, if you won't let me pick you up, you're going to have to follow me."

It mewled again as if in some sort of agreement, but Sasuke figured it was just a drunken coincidence.

What surprised him the most was that the animal did follow him, into the subway, onto the train, right to his front doorstep. When he unlocked the door to the lower level of his apartment, it let itself in, struggling up the first flight of stairs with Sasuke occasionally moving it along using a helpful pat on the butt.

They ascended four flights, and Sasuke finally entered his apartment with the troublesome kitty, and plopped down. It looked at him with wide, oddly colored eyes and mewled again.

"What?"

The cat simply hopped up onto the worn couch next to Sasuke, pawed at his jeans, and clambered up onto his leg. They both fell asleep. Sasuke kept that cat until the day he died. He named it, "Dobe".

So it was no surprise when the word slipped from his mouth and the blonde in orange narrowed his eyes, even though blood was dripping steadily from his mouth and down his chin.

"Idiot," he fired back. Sasuke was shocked that he even had the strength to retaliate, let alone that he knew what the word meant.

"Where do you live?" Sasuke asked, grudgingly.

"You should know, you're a freak of fucking nature."

The rain was coming steadily now, and Sasuke watched the water soak the blonde's hair and clothes.

"Just because I'm a freak of nature doesn't mean I can read your mind...Even though I probably could if I pulled a few strings."

The blonde quivered, Sasuke couldn't tell whether it was from the pain or the cold, and he extended his hand again.

"You'll die if you stay out here, you know," Sasuke growled.

"You're the one who did this to me!" the other choked desperately.

There was a long silence, and Sasuke became fed up. Reaching down, he planted one arm around the boy's shoulders, another underneath his ass, and lifted him up.

"Stop struggling, shithead!"

"You're going to kill me! Help! Help!"

"You were going to die anyway! What else can I do to make you understand that? Want me to rip you a new one, Dobe?"

There was that word again. That name.

After a moment the blonde stopped struggling.

Sasuke didn't ask this time. It was more of a demand.

"Where do you live?"

"SoHo. On Katharine street."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: aughh, this chapter is short, but i wanted the next scene to be sexy time from sasuke's point of view, and i'm planning on switching up the POV every chapter. and i felt this one was a little necessary. **

**Disclaimer: Kishi's. 8D**

When Naruto awoke the next morning, he was in pain. It wasn't the kind of pain that one felt after doing to much exercise, either. His muscles ached, his wounds stung, and he actually felt like his raven-haired demon friend had ripped him a new asshole.

Naruto struggled to sit up. eyes practically glued shut, and reached for the phone. He dialed the number his manager's number and squeaked out an excuse for being absent, not realizing how shot his voice was from screaming. After he told them he was sick, he crawled back underneath the covers, moaning sullenly against the sheets. Slowly, he reviewed the events of the night, wishing it were a dream because he was unable to comprehend the possibility that there were actually creatures like that, and mortified at the fact that they were here, on earth.

But at the same time he felt mildly intrigued. There seemed to be some sort of unspeakable connection between the two of them, something that Naruto hadn't felt for anyone, ever. The new emotion concerned him. He had been raped, and savagely too, by an inhuman /thing/ that could take on a human appearance. It made him wonder how many others their were, and if they were often less forgiving.

Naruto sat up again, hissing in pain, swinging his legs over the side of the bed delicately and hobbling to the bathroom. There he removed his clothes and examined the cuts. all deliberately deep but not enough to need stitches. He slowly bandaged himself meticulously, counting seven cuts in all, cleaning them out with water and peroxide. He felt like taking a shower was too daunting a task.

When he returned to his room, (his apartment was very small,) he scrambled to his beastly PC, turning the ancient, fickle thing on and finally gaining access to the internet after several minutes of booting up. In the address bar he typed "," simply because it knows everything. After sorting through about a hundred different types of demons, (the word demon being very unspecific,) he stumbled upon a page so similar to the thing he encountered that he found it disturbing.

"An incubus (plural incubi) is a demon in male form supposed to lie upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have sexual intercourse with them, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions. Its female counterpart is the succubus. An incubus may pursue sexual relations with a woman in order to father a child, as in the legend of Merlin, and some sources indicate that it may be identified by its unnaturally cold penis. Religious tradition holds that repeated intercourse with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, or even death."

Although the description matched up, there was a lot mentioned about the Incubi and females, but this didn't rule out the possibility.

"...And I don't really remember if his dick was cold," Naruto grumbled bitterly to himself. Growing frustrated with the entire ordeal, he flicked off the monitor and made his way slowly back into his bed, his aching body begging for rest, hardly able to sleep, and if anything, the sleep was fitful.

/What if it's different now?/ he thought slowly, since Naruto was a slow thinker. /What if they can have sex with girls AND boys? And why?/

But what made it worse was how he felt about the whole thing. The truth was, he didn't mind. The whole situation was weird, not just because his ass had been stuffed by an otherwordly entity, but because the fucking thing hadn't killed him. From what he can recollect, it actually brought him home.

Naruto shivered beneath the sheets. He felt cold. The door to the balcony was open a crack, possibly because he had been smoking cigarettes out there two nights before. He loped awkwardly over to the sliding panel, and was about to slam it shut. What he saw there had the potential to make him shit his pants.

/IT/ was there, but /it/ looked normal, as he had when Naruto had first spotted him in the grocery store. There was one of Naruto's signature cigarette's hanging from his pale-pink lips. Naruto thought his eyes lingered there too long, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"ASSHOLE. What the fuck are you doing smoking my cigarettes? I'll fucking kill you!"

The raven-haired whatever it was just sat there and looked at him out of those black eyes, peering up at him from the plastic chair like pools of black against porcelain white. Naruto's face turned hot.

"Kill me?"

"Hell yeah, I'll kick your ass, -tebayo!"

"Are you Japanese?"

"Hardly."

"It's stupid when you say things like that, then."

"Fuck you, why the fuck are you here?" Naruto's fright had gone, to be replaced with anger.

"I never left."

"You fucker, you've been watching me!"

"No, I've been out here smoking your cigarettes and waiting for you to notice."

It all happened so quickly Naruto could barely remember how he'd gotten in that position a second later. Naruto had lunged at him as fast as he could, hand balled into a fist with the intent of slamming it into the raven's smug little face. He seemed to have forgotten that the demon had nails like knives and a strength that would probably trump Super Man. In seconds his hand was pinned up against the screen door, his wounds still tender and body in need of a long rest. He wouldn't give the other the satisfaction of yelling out in pain, though. Instead, he gritted his teeth until his eyes stopped watering.

"Are you stupid?" the boy said huskily, breath hot on Naruto's neck. "Or can you just not wait for more?"

Naruto didn't say anything, unsure of what would come out of his mouth. The raven continued though, mumbling his next question into a purpling bruise on Naruto's collarbone from the night before.

"What's your name, Dobe?"

"None of your business." His voice was shaking.

"Tell me or it'll hurt."

"Uzumaki Naruto."

"So you are Japanese? You don't look it."

"Shut your fucking mou-"

A smooth, pale hand moved to cover his lips forcibly, and Naruto couldn't help but moan as another hand caressed his inner thigh, over a newly bandaged cut.

"You didn't ask me my name."

Naruto shook his head, glaring out of his shining blue eyes that seemed to take on a fire-red tint in the orange light of the sun settling itself behind the city skyline.

"You seem a little tongue tied right now, Dobe. I'll just tell you."

Naruto struggled vainly against him, his weakened body no match for the other, but it didn't hurt to try. Well...In retrospect, it did.

"It's U-chi-ha Sa-su-ke," and between every syllable he nibbled Naruto's tender skin and lapped up the blood.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **mmkay, so this chapter may be a bit choppy. i shat it out in like, half an hour and it hasn't been proofread or anything. lolz, i tried my best. hope you're pleased.

-Squeak

**Disclaimer:** Kishiz.

Cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. How long would it take for this dumbass to notice?

Sasuke didn't know why he'd stayed. It could have been that he was afraid to go back. The underworld was a frightening place, as it should be, but his home wasn't what he feared. It was the consequence that chilled his bones.

He'd left one alive, and that was something you never did.

When the other finally started to stir, Sasuke kept a well trained eye on the blond, watching him carefully, trying not not make any sound as to disturb him. Fuck, he was as hot as he was last night, and Sasuke's mind wouldn't allow him to stray away from the memory of his little cat.

The thought of the other curling up in his lap was almost laughable, but he kept it to himself. His body tensed when after about a half an hour, the boy approached the screen door. Sasuke watched as his cerulean eyes widened and he screamed obscenities about his cigarettes. It almost seemed like the other cared more about his beloved cancer than the fact that there was a demon on his balcony, and that pleased Sasuke for some reason.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

So that was his name, not like names really mattered. Sasuke would have much preferred to call him Dobe...He felt that it suited him well.

Sasuke purred into his neck, after pushing Naruto against the wall, tasting the warm blood that graced his lips, sending erotic shivers down his spine. Naruto's blood tasted different, sweeter, warmer, than any other blood that had ever crossed Sasuke's path, man or woman. It made him hungry.

Now, normally Sasuke could go for days without feeding again, but something about little Naru-chan's stamina made him go crazy. He could feel his blood pulsing in his ears, the hairs raise on his neck, teeth elongate in his mouth.

/Control yourself, Sasuke./

At that, he pulled away, watching Naruto's hand shoot up to his neck, and look down at his bloodied fingers.

"What the fuck is WRONG with you, teme?! Where the fuck did you come from!? What even are you?"

Sasuke felt strange. Naruto didn't even pretend to look afraid of him. It was almost as if he was just some average asshole that had overstayed his welcome after a one night stand. There was obviously something more to the blond than he could possibly put his finger on without probing him a little bit more. Naruto left him curious. He was a challenge.

"Where did you come from?" Sasuke retorted, his voice smooth and icy like the surface of a frozen lake.

"I'm not telling you shit until you tell me first!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but sighed lightly, as sound that hinted at defeat. Naruto looked smug, knowing that Sasuke was cornered. The raven didn't seem to mind much.

"Fine. But it's not pretty."

"I don't care."

"Dobe."

"Teme."

Sasuke furrowed his brow in frustration, but began nonetheless.

"When I was 21 I met a girl. She was beautiful. She was everything I had ever wanted, but at the same time, I hated her."

"Why?" Naruto interrupted, cerulean blue eyes staring up at Sasuke vapidly from the position he had left him in, still clutching the side of his neck as blood began to seep through his fingers. Sasuke was impressed that the wound didn't seem to bother the boy at all. That was interesting.

"Don't interrupt me, Dobe, or I'll rip you limb from limb."

"I'd like to see you try, Sa-su-ke."

"I hated her because she loved me. I hated her because I could never feel the same way. I don't love. I never did."

There was a long pause and Sasuke waited for Naruto to interject, but he seemed to have quelled his loud, boisterous mouth.

"So I killed her."

Another pause.

"And then I killed myself."

"WAIT, wait wait wait wait wait, so you're dead?"

"Well, technically-"

"So you're not dead."

"Let me explain-"

"So you're dead?"

"Shut up, Dobe."

"Teme."

Sasuke let out another desperate sigh, but went on.

"When I awoke I found myself in a room. It was filled with people who had killed themselves by any means. I had a choice, then. I could choose to let go of my soul, or I could choose to serve in Hell. Obviously, I chose the latter. If I could go back to that moment, I'm not even sure I would change my mind. This is good for me. It was what I was meant to do."

Naruto opened his mouth and let out a large yawn before asking, "Meant to do what?"

"Terrorize, maim, kill and the like. We weed out the scum in the world. Hell always needs more slaves."

Naruto shrugged stupidly.

Sasuke almost felt like laughing.

"So what are you, actually?" Naruto quelled, blinking a few times before reaching down to his pack of cigarettes nonchalantly and taking one. Sasuke was surprised when he realized that Naruto had held one out to him.

Taking it, Sasuke replied, "I'm an Incubus."

"And what exactly are those?"

"They have sex with the living and then dispose of their bodies."

"Why?"

"Because that's how we eat."

"Oh."

There was a long silence then, but Sasuke could already see the question forming on Naruto's lips. He could tell he wasn't exactly sure how to word it. But, regardless, Sasuke knew it was coming. He waited patiently as Naruto lit his camel red, watching how his lips delicately caressed the cigarette. The jolt of hunger possessed him again and he fought the urge to move.

Why was he fighting it? What made Naruto so important?

"So..." Naruto began, exhaling the smoke from his lungs and watching it dreamily as it floated away. "Why didn't you kill me?"

"I don't know."

"Hn."

Naruto passed me the lighter after a few seconds, and our hands brushed slightly. I watched his cheeks turn a strange shade of pink. Was he blushing?

"Tell me about you now, Dobe."

"Why?"

"The fact that I'm a demon doesn't seem to phase you. The fact the I raped you while you were tripping on E against the brick wall of a club doesn't seem to bother you either. You're bleeding profusely from cuts that I made, and yet you're looking at me like I could be a fly on the wall for all you care. There's a reason for it, and I want to know."

Naruto shrugged again, taking another drag.

"Shit like that happens to me all the time. It doesn't matter. I've been in gangs, I've seen people die, I've been hurt, fucked, and left, and I guess I'm just waiting until the day my own death finally comes. I'm well prepared. It doesn't scare me, so neither would you."

Sasuke pondered the simple statement thoughtfully.

"I guess that would be true...So it wouldn't matter then, if I did this?"

He approached Naruto, slowly this time, hunger biting his stomach painfully. As if Naruto knew what was coming, he swallowed but moved a bit closer, tentatively. Sasuke again, thought of his cat. What a stupid thing, really, to be obsessed with, but as of late, it was the only pleasant memory he had left.

Sasuke was so close now that he could feel Naruto's breath ghost his cheek. Sasuke took his chin in his lithe fingers and tilted his mouth up to face him. The kiss was soft, sweet, something Sasuke wasn't used to, couldn't ever get used to, the hunger biting him hard, but his body and mind loving it so much he didn't want it to stop. When he finally pulled away, Naruto mumbled something incoherent.

"What?"

"It wouldn't matter," Naruto murmured, averting his eyes to he wouldn't have to look. Sasuke felt as though his insides were burning. What was this feeling? What was Naruto doing to him?

"I need this..." Sasuke snarled almost ferally. "You need to do this for me."

Naruto nodded in understanding, wincing as he heard Sasuke's skin rip as his wings protruded from his back. Black nails sprung from somewhere beneath his cuticles. His eyes turned black and red. The pain Sasuke felt as blood cascaded down his back didn't bother him. He'd experienced it so many times now that it was simply familiar. His tails came next, ripping holes in his jeans and coming to rest like writhing snakes at his feet, ending in razor sharp points. He kept his wild red eyes focused solely on Naruto, watching his expression. It didn't seem to change.

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Every time?"

"Yes."

Sasuke grabbed Naruto's wrist, digging into the soft flesh with his sharp nails, drawing small pinpricks of blood to the surface. Naruto's bed was only a few feet away, and he threw him on it roughly, not bothering to take off any of his own clothes. Their cigarettes were left, discarded on the ground outside, still burning.

The hunger was so great Sasuke thought it might ruin him, that he might fall apart or melt, or explode. The scent coming off of Naruto's skin was exquisite, the smell floating into Sasuke's nostrils and swallowing him whole. Sasuke flipped Naruto onto his back like a ragdoll, crushing his mouth against his. The burning in his stomach only increased when Naruto kissed back.

"Nn, Dobe."

"Teme."

The situation baffled Sasuke. He couldn't comprehend it. He didn't want Naruto dead, he simply wanted him. The attraction was too great, the word "love" kept popping up in his head before he had a chance to ignore it. Pulling off Naruto's pants roughly and tearing them as they caught on his sharp talons, he threw the article of clothing onto the floor, revealing a series of bandages, and soft, unmarked flesh. Making a new would with his teeth in Naruto's upper calf, his eyelids fluttered as his tongue tasted and smelled the new crimson running down his mouth and chin. Naruto was whimpering.

Propping Naruto's legs over his shoulders, Sasuke spat into his puckered opening and almost instantly slid his long, hardened member inside. Naruto thrashed out in pain but bit his lip, as if to keep from screaming. Sasuke wondered why. He knew Naruto was in pain. Why wouldn't he let himself show it?

Sasuke felt the ring of muscle tighten around his cock, and he felt a warm rush flush his cheeks and course up and down his body. The feeling was delicious, Naruto's contorted face and tears and blood, mesmerizing.

He fucked him, hard, without any steady rhythm, listening to Naruto's tired moans and suppressed cries. Sasuke almost felt dizzy, overwhelmed by the intense pleasure wracking his entire body. Naruto's moans hand changed to low, soft murmurs against his pillow, dripping with lust and sweat. Sasuke's fingers were buried in his hair.

Sasuke opened his eyes, noticing that Naruto was practically bucking up against him, as if begging for him to fuck harder and deeper than he could handle. The tip of Naruto's throbbing erection glistened with precum, and Sasuke thought, what the hell, why not? Removing his hand from Naruto's golden tresses, he wrapped his fingers around the base of his member and pumped up and down in time with his own, merciless thrusts. Within minutes, Naruto was begging.

"What?" Sasuke purred, long teeth gleaming rabidly in the dark room.

"Can I come, please?"

"Hn?"

"You fucking bastard...Shit."

Naruto's cum shot out in white, hot ribbons onto his stomach and Sasuke's hand. Sasuke's release came soon afterward. Something about fucking the blond, and having him actually like it was extremely compelling. Sasuke felt fuller than he ever had in his life.

Sasuke removed himself from the tangles of Naruto's sheets and perched on the edge of the bed, watching Naruto sullenly, wings folded neatly at his back. His eyes were well adjusted to the darkness of the room. Living in Hell would do that to you. Sasuke tried not to think about the events that had just occurred, that he'd spilled his secret, that he'd actually fucked someone because he /almost/ cared about them. Almost.

It was then when something shiny caught his sight out of the corner of his eye.

"Yo, Dobe?"

"Teme?"

"What is that?"

"What is what."

"That, on your dresser."

Sasuke watched Naruto slowly sit up. He knew he had been weakened. Sex with an Incubus deteriorates you.

"Oh, that?" Naruto groaned, adjusting to his surroundings. "I was orphaned...And when I was a baby, they found that around my wrist. I think it's a cat collar or something stupid like that."

Sasuke stood and walked hesitantly over to the object, afraid to pick it up. The object had been his. Or, it had been his cat's. Sasuke felt like his heart was about to break, if he even had one.

"This...is yours?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing. No reason. I need a cigarette."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: **thankkkk youuu people who reviewed! i really love seeing your comments, and especially those who pop up every few chapters to say hey! lol. your reviews give me more of an incentive to write, so get on that! 8P i felt that Naruto needed a little bit of background so i decided to do that with this chapter. implied gaanaru in this chapter, but don't worry, he won't show up again until later and cause problems. nn yey! so anyway, you'll probably get assaulted by updates this week, i'm on a writing binge. and don't worry! there is something magical about Naruto. 8O

-Squeak

**Disclaimer: **Kishi's! ;P

Days had passed since Naruto last saw Sasuke, and his body was recuperating rapidly. Naruto had never gotten sick, never really tired and had always been healthy. It was strange, but ever since he was a child he had always healed up very quickly. He figured it was just the way he was, but when he broke his leg in two places and healed up in a month, doctors were baffled. He was supposed to be stuck in a wheelchair for at least six months, and even then it was questionable as to whether he'd be able to walk properly after a year. But there he was, a little twelve year old blond boy ferociously trying to tear off his cast, before skipping around merrily as though he had never been hit by that car in the first place. His doctor even commented that Naruto's healing properties could be considered, "supernatural."

Her name was Tsunade, but Naruto often referred to her as Baa-chan or old hag, despite her youthful appearance and large breasts. She was in charge of medicine at his orphanage, and was said to have known his parents well. Minato and Kushina, Naruto knew, had always been involved with children in need. Little did they know that only a year after Naruto was born, he would be placed in the same orphanage they so diligently visited every week.

Under the care of Tsunade, Naruto began to grow. Children were adopted out of the orphanage rapidly at his age, but for some reason, no one wanted him. Growing up was hard, and it got even harder when the testing started.

The testing was what Baa-chan came up with when she noticed that there was something remarkable going on with Naruto. It seemed he could regenerate skin and blood cells at an extraordinarily fast pace compared to other human beings. When he got a cut, the mark disappeared in less than an hour. When a more serious injury befell him, (like the time he hit his head on the corner of a marble coffee table), the wound seemed to sew itself shut. Tsunade puzzled and puzzled over Naruto for years, and as long as he wasn't adopted, it would stay that way.

The other children began to grow jealous of Naruto, because, unlike him, they had the utmost respect for Tsunade. They loved her and cherished her as their own mother. Naruto, however, had no patience for her drinking and yelling, and badmouthed her whenever he could. Even so, she payed more attention to the growing blond than she did any of them. They regarded him as different, and it was a rare occurrence that anyone would come up to Naruto unless they wanted something from him, like a crayon or a toy.

Naruto grew depressed at his lack of friends, and became reclusive. As he got older, he began to get into fights. Tsunade, for lack of a better option, shipped him off to boarding school in Japan, as all the other children had been adopted out. The day Naruto turned twelve and began his years there was when things began to get bad.

The fighting got worse as Naruto got stronger. He never attempted to pick fights, but for some reason everyone wanted to pick fights with him. They needed to see if they could tear him apart hard enough that he wouldn't be better the next day.

They never could.

For High School, Naruto transferred back to New York City, for more experiments from Baa-chan. He lived with a foster parent now, who he actually liked a lot, named Umino Iruka. Other than the plus of having a new, caring parent, school dragged along morosely. It was then, however, when he started making bonds that would suffice for friends. His closest was the leader of his gang, Sabaku No Gaara. When Naruto turned seventeen, rumors began flying that he was abusing drugs, (which he was), and that he had raped one of the more popular girls, Yamanaka Ino, (which he hadn't. She had never even expressed interest in him before.) Girls didn't want him because he was too brash, and boys were intimidated by him because he was always guarded and ready for flying fists and stinging insults. Regardless, he got in a tangle with Gaara, who sent him sprawling to the ground, back in the dirt and nose bloody, but to Naruto's infinite surprise, Gaara reached down to help him up. It was more of a spar between two "friends", as if the redhead was testing him out. Little did Naruto know that he actually was.

It was about two days later that Naruto received a note taped to his locker. When he opened the paper it said, simply, "you passed," printed neatly in the center of the page. Gaara and Naruto were inseparable after that.

But with the friendship came consequences. If kids thought Naruto was into drugs before, it got worse. Before first period every day, Gaara and Naruto would blow lines in the boys bathroom. Gaara's family was rich, they gave him all the money he wanted, and Naruto was so good to him he never felt bad giving him half of anything he had.

But there was a secret between the two of them that they'd never shared. The repercussions would be too dire if anyone found out. Their senior year of high school, (Naruto wondered how the hell he even got through it,) Gaara had formed a gang of six members in order to rival another group of inner-city kids called, "The Sound Five." The gang, lead by a twenty-one year old, peculiar looking white-haired man, had decided to start selling on his turf. There was an unspoken rule between drug dealers: a "you stay on your side, i'll stay on mine," type of thing. And when someone broke that rule, they incited a full-on war.

The core members of Gaara's gang were Hyuuga Neji, Akimichi Chouji, Nara Shikamaru, Rock Lee, and of course, Uzumaki Naruto. The outcome of the gang war was not important. What was important, however, was the relationship Naruto had with each boy, especially Gaara. Their friendship developed more than either of them wish that it had.

The thing that they had been hiding was that they were in love. What tore them apart was the love itself. They had been hiding it more from each other than anyone else.

Years passed and Naruto remained in New York City, unable to leave, and once every blue moon Gaara of the Desert would come visit him, fuck him, leave him. The thought made Naruto smile. That was how Gaara had always been.

But now, other things consumed his mind. Sasuke. Who was he, or had he been? Where did he come from?

/Why did he pick me?/


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: **thank you to everyone who reviewed! i'm so excited, i have like, 2,000 hits. lol yay!you guys are keeping me going.

Sasuke was restless. He had been forbidden from seeing Naruto again, but he was addicted already. It was only a matter of time before the both of them were doomed. From what he knew, Naruto was already going to Hell anyway...Literally.

What had been bothering Sasuke the most was not the separation from his Dobe, but /how/ Naruto was his Dobe at all. He had been intrigued already at the fact that Naruto reminded him impossibly of his old kitten, but could he actually /be/ him? It just didn't make sense.

Now, the Sasuke many years ago would have called reincarnation impossible, but considering that he was now a four-tailed demon rapist had to account for something. There was only one way to find out for sure. What if Uzumaki Naruto was really /his/ Dobe? What would he do then?

He needed to find Haruno Sakura. She was the only one that would willingly help him.

"Sakura?" he called, softly, knowing that she would hear him through the screams and heartbreak of thousands of chained, battered souls. In Hell, you had to have good ears.

His red and black eyes adjusted to the gloom of his room, which was simply a cavern embedded in a massive wall of searing rock, located somewhere beneath the long, church-like structure that housed the bodies. Sakura was there in an instant. He could hear her sharp heels clicking mercilessly down the hall.

"Sasuke?" Her voice was shrill and nervous. It was not very often he let anyone into his room, and he had summoned her. She blinked her large, green eyes in the darkness, trying to pick out his form from all of the other shapeless objects.

"Hn."

She caught sight of him then, the glint of his red, flashing eyes catching her peripheral. She could see his outline now.

"It's not very often I get summoned by you, Sasuke," she said, but however seductively, it didn't matter. Sasuke was focused. He needed answers and he needed them now.

"We keep all of the records of the dead, right?"

"Yes, Sasuke, you know that."

"Even animals?"

"Uh...Why do you ask?"

"It's nothing, I just need you to do this for me."

"I know where to look..."

"And don't tell /him/ about this, will you?"

"I...I won't."

Defying the Devil was dangerous business. They were both risking their "second" lives. Sasuke had no choice. He would sacrifice anything for Naruto.

/Wait a minute, Sasuke, you've gone crazy. You're ready to throw away this? Your second chance? For nothing?/

Sasuke swallowed and felt his insides twist into a knot.

/It isn't nothing. Not anymore./

Sasuke suddenly felt it grow very cold. They were descending, down a flight of dark, ancient stone stairs. Sasuke didn't miss Sakura's furtive glances in his direction. The thought of her made him sick. All he could think about was Naruto.

/What is this? What's happening to me? How could someone so insignificant, who I've only actually met once, have such a ridiculous hold on me? Well- if I'm right, I've known him for a long time now./

Further and further the went, the stairs were small, Sakura's heels echoing against the cavernous stone walls.

"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura murmered questioningly, but the walls amplified her tone so much so she sounded desperate.

"Hn." That was all that Sakura usually got out of him. He talked to her as little as possible, but that didn't really make a difference. She ended up blabbering until his ears bled anyway.

"Is this about that boy? You've been acting so strange lately."

Sasuke didn't reply, not because he didn't feel like saying anything, but solely because he couldn't make up a response that would refute her suspicions fast enough.

"I'm worried about you, Sasuke. Don't you know what could happen?"

Sasuke gave her a flat glare, one that seemed to scream, 'well, DUH', but he kept his mouth shut. She was helping after all.

Nothing was said for a long time. After walking forever down a claustrophobic tunnel, they reached a small door, cracked and aching with age. There was dust on the knob. Sakura reached for the brass handle and turned. The door swung open with a click and a creak.

What Sasuke saw was like nothing he had ever witnessed, living or dead. The room was filled with papers, folders, file cabinets, piled to a ceiling that was so high he couldn't see the top. But what amused him the most was that the room was bustling with none other than the infamous undead. Zombies. Fully functioning, moving, stacking, counting, organizing, cataloging zombies. Sasuke had always wondered what they did with them.

They approached a rickety looking desk, and a rather 'good-looking' to say the least, zombie greeted them with a wicked smile. His face was ghostly white, and there were two long, red triangles tattooed down the length of his cheeks. Chunks of his arms were missing, revealing pink, wet-looking flesh and marred bone. One of his fingers looked like it had been gnawed off by a dog.

"Inuzuka Kiba, how may I help you?"

Sakura smiled at him dashingly. Sasuke made a face.

"We're looking for-" the pink haired vixen began, but Sasuke interrupted her impatiently.

"We need a record. Uzumaki Naruto. Anything. He might have been a cat. I don't know."

Kiba stopped short, withdrawing his long, dog-like tongue back into his mouth since he had been panting rudely into Sakura's cleavage.

"Naruto?"

Sasuke cocked his head, narrowing his eyes quizzically.

"You said Naruto."

"Yeah, so?"

"I fucking love that guy!"

"What!?" Sakura and Sasuke yelped in unison.

"We were friends way back when, when they sealed him."

"Sealed?" /What the fuck is this asshole talking about? Sealed? Sealed what? When?/

"Oh, you mean you don't know? I don't think he does either so don't bother asking...He probably won't even remember who I am, it's been like, five hundred years. And the fact that he keeps getting reincarnated doesn't help. He hardly remembers anything from his past lives."

"Wait, slow down," Sasuke cried desperately, his mind exploding with the information he was receiving.

Sakura butted in. "Will you please enlighten us, Inuzuka?"

He looked at her dreamily and nodded stupidly.

"A thousand years ago, Japan," he began, chewing on the string of his parka thoughtfully. "A nine-tailed fox demon, Kyuubi, was the most powerful creation to ever fucking come out of Hell. Well, it escaped, essentially. The big guy couldn't keep it down here. It was unstoppable. The Kyuubi popped up in Japan, started killing everything. Naruto was only a baby then. Cute, blond little thing." He snorted with laughter. "Anyway, what basically ensued was an epic armageddon sort of thing. Apocalypse Now, end of the world, end all be all of everything that was good and holy." Kiba laughed at his little joke. Sasuke's eyes were wide. Sakura was simply listening, providing no reaction.

"Big guy thought, well, shit, we can't let this happen. We punish the dead, not the living, all that shit. So, fucking, I don't know how he found Naruto, but he opened him up and put the damn fox inside. He should still have the mark- it's pretty obvious, looks like a tattoo around his belly button. Ha, he probably wonders where the fuck that came from."

/Tattoo? I never saw that.../

"Anyway, one body can't house the demon forever, obviously. It'll be released when he dies. So the big guy put a weird little spell on him. After every death he comes back the same, kinda like a phoenix, you know those birds that light the fuck on fire and then are reborn from the ashes, all that mumbo jumbo suck my dick voodoo. That way the demon is stuck in Naruto forever and ever."

"Well, was he my cat?" Sasuke inquired, swallowing heavily as though he couldn't breath. Naruto was a demon like him? That was fucked up.

"It's possible. Haha, sometimes every lifetime we've given him, there's a chance that it'll get messed up. He can turn into anything, but most of the time he's Uzumaki Naruto over and over again."

"Will his powers present themselves ever?"

"If he lets them out."

That sent a chill down Sasuke's spine. It was kind of hot.

"But, you should probably tell big guy he's the one you're fucking. He definitely won't want to kill him."

He won't? He can keep Naruto?

"Wait, how did you know we were fucking?" Sasuke asked blatantly. Sakura let out a small, miffed squeak.

"It's written all over your face. I've been around here a lot longer then you. Now bye, I'm sure you've learned everything you need to know."

Sasuke turned around slowly, Sakura already clicking away, her shoulders slumped dejectedly.

Sasuke was thinking so hard that he almost tripped over a zombie dog that was barking and nipping at his legs on a clear path to Kiba. He then realized that that dog literally chewed it's owner's fingers off.

After that Sasuke just followed the click, click, click of Sakura's heels. Was she sniffling? Fuck, he didn't care.

/Naruto. He had to see Naruto./


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** i know this chapter is short but don't worry. we're just about to get into the good stuff. 8D mwahahahaha. thanks to all of my reviewersss again.

**Disclaimer: **Kishimotototototototo

Nothing, nothing from Sasuke, not a word in a week and a half.

"Is it too much to ask for a little bit of closure?" Naruto wondered aloud as he lit a spliff, sitting the plastic lawn chair on his cube of a balcony. He had just returned home from work and needed to relax, but found himself having trouble with sitting down at all.

"Who are you? Why are you always on my mind?"

He shook his head, letting the smoke fill his lungs as the tension in his shoulders loosened.

"I don't know," came a voice from somewhere behind him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and making his azure eyes grow wide.

"Sasuke?"

Before he could even turn around he felt two, strangely cold arms encircle his shoulders from behind, lips buried in his warm neck. Naruto let out a harsh sigh.

"Fucking retard, you scared the shit out of me."

Sasuke purred in his ear.

"You smell good," he growled complacently.

"Where have you been?"

"What, I'm not your wife."

"Fuck you."

Sasuke started chuckling. Naruto had never seen him do that. He craned his neck towards the source of the sound, attempting to catch a glimpse of something he thought he might never see again. Sasuke leaned forward playfully.

"What're you looking at, huh?"

Naruto turned red as Sasuke leaned inwards to kiss him, pecking him gently on the side of the mouth. Naruto saw him smiling. It made him feel warm.

"Why are you in such a good mood?" Naruto asked.

"Just because, Dobe."

Naruto felt him reach down to grasp the hem of his shirt. It rose up, Sasuke's pale fingers tickling the golden-colored fuzz on his abdomen. Naruto let a small, surprised gasp escape from his lips, hungry for more. But Sasuke wasn't interested in eating right now. There was something he needed to find out.

He grabbed Naruto roughly by the shoulders, flinging the chair backwards and leaving Naruto sprawled out on the ground, moaning groggily. He lunged forwards and yanked up his shirt.

"You do have it!"

"What the fuck, cunt!" Naruto yelled wildly, kicking his legs and trying to stand up like a turtle caught with his soft belly exposed to a predator.

"You have a nine-tailed demon fox sealed inside you!"

"What the fuck are you talking about??"

"Your tattoo!"

"Oh, that? I don't know what that is..."

"Well I do!!" Sasuke was practically on top of Naruto now, giddy with excitement. Naruto was simply dazed, looking up at his incredibly "out of character" Sasuke and trying to put two and two together. So, say that he /was/ a carrier for a nine-tailed fox demon. What did that mean? Why was Sasuke so happy about it?

"Explain, teme."

Sasuke helped Naruto up and stole a camel that had been flung from Naruto's fingers at the time of impact and took a puff. It was still burning.

"Is there weed in this?"

"Yes, you're ignoring the question, Sasuke-teme."

"Oh. Well it goes like this. Basically, you've been alive for 1,000 years and your soul keeps being transported into different hosts. So you're being reincarnated again and again. I used to have a cat. I called him Dobe, because he was a retard, but that's besides the point. The tattoo on your stomach is actually a seal - I have one too." At this point in the story Sasuke pulled down the collar of his black t-shirt and turned around. Naruto noticed three, spiralling black dots placed in a neat little triangle on his neck. "That's the thing that allows me to keep a human appearance on earth. I have four tails, but I can add or lose them, depending on the circumstances. Mine is kind of small. but Naruto, yours is fucking massive in comparison. That thing inside you is huge! Has there ever been anything in your life that you can't possibly explain?"

"Try everything..." Naruto groaned, taking the spliff from Sasuke as he passed it to him.

"Name one, dobe."

"Well, both my parents are dead, and I lived in an orphanage for a big part of my life. No one would take me, Sasuke. There was something wrong with me, something preventing me from getting adopted out. They would take one look at me as if they knew..."

"What if they did?"

"But knew what?"

"I told you, there's a giant nine-tailed fox demon harbored in your insides."

"But how would they have known, Sasuke? Who would have told them?"

The question was asked too late. Naruto had answered it in his own head. Baa-chan. Baa-chan would have known.

"Was there someone, anyone, that you think suspected anything about you?" Sasuke inquired, smirking as he saw the apparent realization sneak up behind Naruto and bite him in the ass.

"Yes. The owner of the orphanage. She was also a doctor, and a damn good one too. She started doing tests on me when I was younger. She noticed that I healed abnormally fast."

"And why do you think that happens to you? Where are the cuts I gave you last week?"

"Gone."

There was a long silence as Naruto passed the joint back to Sasuke. The raven spoke first.

"Anything else weird?"

"The cat collar..." Realization dawned on Naruto yet again. "Wait, were you saying something about a cat before? Why did you pick up my cat collar that day? Sasuke..."

"Naruto, you were my fucking cat. That's why I didn't kill you. I didn't know it then either, but when I was alive, I fucking loved that cat. Kiba told me that sometimes the spell messes up...That it's possible you can get put into animal bodies instead of human bodies."

"Fuck. We have to go see Baa-chan."

"Baa-chan, dobe? Who is Baa-chan?"

"The headmistress in my orphanage, stupid. I already told you about her."

"Fuck you."

"Don't even think about flying away on me, Sasuke. You're coming."

"Ugh..."

"And who is Kiba? His name sounds familiar."

"I'll explain later, dobe. Later."


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: **thank you to everyone who's consistently reviewing!! i'll thank you personally next chapter.

i'm just too lazy to do that right now after finally plugging this thing out after like, a day and a half. i went out and partied in between chapters, lol. i hope you guys like it. ;D

oh, and PS, i really love whitney houston, i don't know why...considering that i'm all about intense japanese metal. i mean. she's just so good. and she's addicted to crack. lol. second only in my book to britney spears! i just love fucked up bitches. but anyway, there is no point to this sentence, listen to whitney houston. olololol.

**Disclaimer: **KishiLOLOMG

The subway ride to see "Baa-chan" was long. Sasuke found himself getting antsy, sitting next to Naruto, watching the side profile of his face as he settled himself deep in thought. He was clutching his stomach, where the black seal rested in a long spiral around his belly button beneath his white shirt.

"Don't worry about it, dobe..." Sasuke remarked, trying to calm his blonde counterpart down. What he received in return was a snarky glare and more indefinite, quiet brooding.

Sasuke realized how nervous he could be. What did this mean for him? How was it tolling on his brain? Sasuke couldn't tell. It pained him to simply sit and watch the emotional turmoil register on Naruto's face.

Sasuke swallowed and nervously extended his hand to Naruto's which was resting on the edge of the seat next to him. He rested his hand on top of his and entwined their fingers. Naruto looked up at him, his startling blue eyes mesmerized in shock. Sasuke was sure that shock was registering on his own face as well. It had been a long time since he had ever held anyone's hand, even Karin's. He hardly ever displayed any sort of affection for her, but she didn't care. She was loyal and she loved him. Sasuke wasn't even sure if he actually felt anything for her, or if he'd settled for her. He would have rather married his cat.

Sasuke almost laughed out loud.

"What's so funny..." Naruto snarled, trying to withdraw his arm and escape Sasuke's grasp.

"Nothing," Sasuke responded slyly, refusing to relinquish his hold.

Naruto stopped struggling after a few minutes and let Sasuke play idly with his fingers. Sasuke was proud of himself; Naruto seemed to have loosened up.

"Why are you so nervous, Naruto-dobe?" he asked, quizzically, keeping his voice low so as not to startle him. There weren't very many people in the car, and the noise of the rattling train on the tracks was so loud they wouldn't have been able to hear him anyway. Sasuke approached Naruto as though he was an animal. The whisker-marks on Naruto's cheeks seemed to make the reasoning for this obvious now. But at the same time, Sasuke wondered where they came from.

It took Naruto a few moments to respond. Sasuke's eyes fell to Naruto's lithe form snuggled into a pair of bright orange skinny jeans. He resisted the urge to touch him in /that/ way; an urge that crept up behind him and strangled him to the point where he didn't think he could speak. He was so hungry.

"I don't know...Will Baa-chan still like me?"

"Why wouldn't she?" Sasuke was able to squeak out.

"I don't know. I work in a grocery store and I have a cheap apartment...I'm not very impressive."

"Naruto..." Sasuke choked out, trying to find his voice again, focusing on utmost self control. "You're captivating, really. She'll still like you."

Their stop came and they finally got out, a lone rat squeaking past their ankles as they ascended the stairs. Sasuke found it easier to breathe out in the open. He didn't let go of Naruto's hand, which seemed to make Naruto confused and rather bashful.

"Let go of me," he said, his face as red as a tomato.

"No," Sasuke responded, needing the contact for some reason.

"Please, Sasuke?"

"Naruto-"

All he could think about was how good he felt under his fingers, the softness of his skin, the taste of his blood. He felt like he couldn't control himself, his body couldn't possibly take anymore, Naruto's energy drawing him nearer and nearer to the point of collapse, or rape, whichever one came first.

"I need..."

Sasuke doubled over on the sidewalk. Naruto stopped in concern. What Sasuke can remember of that moment was the most frightening, /different/ thing he had experienced in a long time.

It came out.

Sasuke's ivory black eyes witnessed something he couldn't comprehend, a flurry of orange and red. A hand enclosed around his wrist, Naruto's long fingers, the ends sprouted into dark nails that mimicked Sasuke's, but his body was almost completely different. A pair of long, orange ears sprouted from a mane of blonde hair that was longer than before, shaggy around the edges, clinging to the nape of his neck. Naruto's whole body seemed to be covered in fire. His eyes were red, with catlike slits.

Sasuke's first response was to transform. The street was empty, and as a defense mechanism, he turned, teeth elongating and wings sprouting from his shoulders, his seal spreading to all points of his body as his eyes turned from black to red.

Sasuke noticed that Naruto wasn't attacking him, and he felt his shoulders relax.

"Naruto?"

"Hmmm?"

"What just happened?"

"I get what you're talking about now."

"Why did you do that?"

"You were hurting."

Sasuke looked at him questioningly, an eyebrow raised.

Naruto responded more affirmatively, his voice lower and exuding a power that made Sasuke feel weak.

"You were hurting and I can't have you hurting."

Sasuke found it oddly touching. He got a better look at Naruto's body. His shirt had ripped because he'd gotten bigger, as well as his orange jeans, now tattered and useless. He only had two tails, bubbling in a sort of ghostly, transparent way, as if they weren't really there. As if they belonged to someone else.

And they did.

"Naru-"

"Shut up," Naruto snarled, backing Sasuke up against a wall. Sasuke could feel the warmth exuding from his skin, which had grown tepid because Sasuke was always so cold. It was obvious that they were different kinds of demons.

"I can't have you hurting, Sasuke..." Naruto murmured, licking a long, wet line from the nape of Sasuke's neck to the back of his ear. Sasuke shivered. Never once had he not been in control, even when he was alive. It wracked his sanity.

Now, Sasuke knew that he was more powerful at this point, his four tails opposed to two, but at the same time he knew Naruto was supposed to be housing a /nine/ tailed fox demon, which meant that more could come out. And for some reason, he seemed content about the whole ordeal. He was eager to find out what it felt like, and almost positive that his hunger for Naruto would be satiated. Sasuke was never /just/ hungry anymore. He was always hungry for Naruto.

It was around ten o'clock on a Wednesday, and they were in a rather scuzzy part of town. However, Sasuke thought that a little concealment would have been better. Two people fucking is one thing. Two demons fucking is another.

Naruto, seemingly having read his mind, grabbed Sasuke's hand and pulled. Sasuke followed obediently. Little did Naruto know that he was plotting. Sasuke was content with the idea of Naruto topping for now, but it wouldn't take very long for Sasuke to want that control back. It was his.

They found a rather empty looking parking garage and stole inside. Sasuke felt like a teenager again, trying to find a place to fuck because they couldn't do it in the house. Naruto snuggled Sasuke back into a well-concealed corner and practically tore his clothes off, dropping them uselessly to the floor.

Even in this state Sasuke could tell that Naruto was unsure, but at the same time knew exactly what he wanted, his throbbing erection pressed against Sasuke's stomach, dripping and pulsing gently against his skin. Their breathing was slow and measured, and Sasuke could feel his hunger decreasing rapidly. Naruto had manifested in his blood, filling him, needing to be filled, dying to come but at the same time never wanting it to stop. When Naruto's cock pressed up against his asshole, wet from Naruto's spit, he accepted it easily. Pain was one thing when you were human. When you weren't, it was another. It made more sense, you accepted it more, even enjoyed it. Not as much as you enjoyed inflicting it, but at the same time, you wanted it. It felt good.

Sasuke could feel the moans escaping from his throat. They echoed on the walls in time with Naruto's occasional noises that he couldn't contain.

It felt too good. There was blood on the ground.

"Sasu-"

He could feel Naruto come inside him, the way his cock twitched, watching as his red eyes closed in pure ecstasy. Just that was enough for Sasuke to come, too, hot, white liquid dripping onto the ground by his feet.

They stayed there in each other's arms for a long moment, thriving off of their mingling body temperatures, shivering even though neither of them could feel cold. Naruto pulled himself out of Sasuke, who moaned slightly as he did so, panting and swallowing at the loss of connection. They stood apart from one another, looking critically, wondering if that had even happened the way it did, and why they both looked normal now, too tired to retain their metaphysical form for too long.

They tried to piece their clothes back on, but to no avail.

"Naruto, give me your pants."

The blond complied, handing him his shredded pair of jeans. Sasuke squeezed into them after throwing on his boxers. They had gotten bigger with Naruto, so Sasuke could fit into them. His own were mangled beyond repair.

"Put on my shirt," Sasuke advised, and Naruto did so. Sasuke's shirt was big enough on him that it concealed the hole in his boxers where they buttoned. Their shoes looked remarkably untouched. Sasuke tugged on his boots and Naruto his converses, (which were old and ratty to begin with). The end result was a shirtless Sasuke and a pantsless Naruto, but it would get them home okay.

"Sasuke?" Naruto asked as they walked back towards the subway station, digging into Sasuke's back pocket for his own cigarettes.

"Hnn?" Sasuke didn't seem very phased as a group of girls ogled him as they passed.

Naruto scowled at them possessively.

"I can't have you hurting. I can't."

"You've said it like, six times now, Dobe."

"It's because I mean it, Teme."

There was a long silence. They were about to climb down the flight of stairs back into the warm underground before a shrill voice that neither of them expected pierced the night air.

"UZUMAKI NARUTO. WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING PANTS!?"

Sasuke could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

/Who is that??/ He glanced over at Naruto for reassurance.

"Baa-chan." And then he groaned.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: **i would like to thank the following, awesome people for reviewing! ; Kami-Inu(lol, i love your reviews, they're so in depth ^^;), Nikotehfox, Kiwi wiki, Vampire-chan, deathskeith, KittyBlue(i like pantsless naru-chan, too), realityfling18, Back-up'Girl, sasukexnaruto4ever (yes, 4ever and everrr. ^^;), ooxshinobixoo, CrystalSearcher, Broken Sexed Up Bloody Kitten, Kyorose, kitsunelova, and wolf'sraingreatestfan.

all of your quessstionns will be answered soon. i'm really glad you guys like it. it's the most reviews i've gotten evrrr! arigatouuu!

oh, and also, the bajillions of people who put this story in their alerts and all that, i love you too! kyahh!

-Squeak

**Disclaimer: **kishikishikishi

Sasuke watched as Naruto tucked his tail in between his legs like a dog. Not that he had a tail to tuck, it was just the priceless expression that warped his face. His eyes widened and his mouth formed a round little 'o' shape, as if he was about to scream, "oh shit" at the top of his lungs. He furrowed his blond eyebrows. Adorable.

Not like Sasuke thought /he/ was adorable, really. It could have been anyone making that face. That's just the word that came to mind when he saw it.

/I need to stop trying to make excuses for myself./

At that moment 'Baa-chan' stepped out of the gloom into the harsh glow of a flickering street lamp. She stood with a hand on her hips, long, blonde pig-tails cascading down over her immensely proportioned breasts.

"Baaaaaa-channnnnnnnnn," he heard Naruto wail, wriggling in nothing but a t-shirt and sneakers in the middle of the sidewalk. "Don't scare me like that."

"Where have you been, retard? You promised you'd come visit, and what do I get? FOUR YEARS OF NOTHING."

"But..But Baa-"

"DON'T BAA-CHAN ME YOU FREAK OF NATURE. YOU'RE A WASTE OF FUCKING HUMAN LIFE."

"Baaaaa-"

"No phone calls! No letters! No nothing! And this is where I find you!??! HALF NAKED WITH SOME GUY YOU PROBABLY JUST MET??"

"Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-"

"AND WHO ARE YOU!?"

Sasuke felt like he had walked into a pretty bad situation that he really wanted no part of, considering he was wearing a pair of tacky orange pants filled with ridiculous rips and no shirt.

"Uchiha Sasuke-"

"When did you meet shithead over there??" 'Baa-chan' snapped, indicating the blond that was currently shrouded in shadow, making strange noises. 'Baa-chan, baabaabaaaaa-chan'.

"Oh, you mean Naruto-Dobe? About a week ago."

She smirked at the insult.

"I like him! And it's been over a week!! Wow, you're on a roll, Uzumaki!"

"Baa-"

"Shut up Naruto. Won't you both come inside for tea?"

Sasuke nodded briefly and watched 'Baa-chan' pick up Naruto by the scruff of the neck and firmly pinch his ear between her forefinger and thumb.

"Stoppit hag. I can walk. GETTTT offfffff."

Sasuke could do nothing else but follow.

--

Sasuke wasn't sure how this conversation would go. They had just settled in for tea, sipping lightly at hot cups. Tsunade, (as she was called, after Sasuke finally learned what her name was), had poured quite a bit of sake into all of their drinks. Sasuke didn't mind. He supposed it would help him loosen up.

"So," Tsunade began, trying to initiate a conversation. Naruto was nervously drinking his sake-tea, and then pouring more, all the while adding more sake to the concoction. He had had three cups already.

"You both seem to have something on your mind, and I know you weren't here by chance..."

"That old hag doesn't miss a thing!" Naruto blurted drunkenly, taking a swig of sake from the bottle.

"Fuck you, kid!" the rather young looking woman growled, snatching the bottle and taking a swig herself. Sasuke found it endearing.

She continued.

"Can I ask YOU," she said, aiming the question at Sasuke. He seemed more coherent. "What's the trouble?"

Before Sasuke could speak, drunk little Naruto decided to launch right into the story.

"Baa-chan, Baa-chan, I'll tell you! One day I was pretty fucked up and I had seen Sasuke earlier in the grocery store because he was following me 'cause I'm so good looking. So I got pretty fucked up and went to the club and was dancing and stuff and then I felt sick so I came outside and threw up and then I looked up and he was there so we had sex but guess what! BAA-CHANNN YOU'LLL NEVER GUESS! He morphed into a weird demon thing and fucked me up the butt! It was really painful and I thought I was gonna die because I was bleeding like buckets of blood in an alleyway but then he came back because he felt bad. So then we fucked a couple more times because I decided I wanted to and then something really weird happened and it turns out that I'm housing a nine-tailed demon fox inside me named kyoobert or something and then we needed to go find you because I knew you probably knew about it because of all those tests and stuff. BUT THENNN we decided to have sex because something happened to Sasuke and it scared me but I can't remember what it was right now. So then when I got all upset about Sasuke I felt really weird and then I turned into like, THE COOLEST THING EVER. Like a demon thing. Oh, and I'm Sasuke's cat."

There was a long silence. Tsunade was staring at Sasuke, Sasuke looking incredulously at Naruto as if he'd just been payed ten dollars to eat Kiba's dog shit.

Tsunade flopped forwards and held her head in her hands.

"So you know?"

Naruto stopped drinking and turned to look at her.

"You knew too? But Baa-chan, why didn't you ever tell me?" Naruto looked hurt. Sasuke felt his heartstrings twitch.

"I couldn't. It wouldn't make sense. Demons and Angels aren't supposed to exist like this, let alone exist at all. I wanted you to live this life happily and not have to worry about releasing the Kyuubi inside of you...I wanted you to be free."

Sasuke interjected.

"Angels? What about angels..."

"Sasuke, you know every dark side needs light. Yin and yang."

Sasuke swallowed. He felt it now. There was a presence that was hard to sense when he met her, but now the room was filled to the brim with it. It was like a sickly sweet perfume, almost intoxicating. And Naruto was even more drunk off of it.

"You-"

"Yes, me. I'm an angel. A messenger from God."

Her words lingered in the air along with the thickness of her aura.

"I came to earth many years ago, to walk among the living. But more specifically, to find Naruto."

"But...hic...Why, Baa-chan??" Naruto slurred. Sasuke had almost forgotten he was there.

"The last, great apocalyptic war occurred when the Kyuubi escaped. The Devil sealed it away inside of Naruto, not to end the destruction of mankind, but to keep it in his possession. He needs that demon. With it he can crush Heaven, as well as imprison humanity. He's just waiting until the time is right. God sent me and two others to watch over you, to try to find a way to get the demon out of your body so you can live a normal life, and die a normal death. The problem is, you are the only person on earth who can contain the demons power. We never found out why, and we never found out /how/ to get it out of you."

Sasuke shifted in his seat. He could feel the harshness of her strength burning his cold skin. Naruto was staring stupidly off into space.

"Sasuke."

He turned to her, almost shyly.

"Do you love Naruto?"

"What?" Sasuke responded, his voice small and constricted.

"Do you love Naruto?" She repeated, slightly irritated. Her patience was thin.

"I-"

"Do you love him or not!?" Tsunade snapped, finished with Sasuke's inherent 'beating around the bush.'

He looked over at Naruto furtively. Blue eyes were locked on him, beautiful and aching. He took a deep breath.

"I do."

He saw the corners of Naruto's mouth twitch into a contented smile. Did that mean Naruto loved him too?

"If you love him, " Tsunade went on, "then you'll protect him. You can't let the Devil get his hands on him. He'll die."

"But, Tsunade-sama, he's my master. He owns me."

"Nobody owns you but you, Sasuke."

Listening to her words, Sasuke nodded, and felt new purpose grow in his charred, blackened heart. His eyes flashed black and red.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note: **this is a really short chapter, and i know you'll all hate me for it. gaanaru. 8O OH NOEZ.

**Disclaimer: **kishishsihsihsishsihihdkgndkfhng;ljmgflh

It was as if the night couldn't get any worse. Naruto was forced to waddle home sans pants, sit on the dirty subway sans pants, (why, why of all days did he choose to wear briefs? Those things exploded into flames when he turned), continually attempting to conceal his "junk".

Sasuke was being moody. Every time Naruto tried to talk to him he would either say nothing, or look at him like he was a bad dog.

"Sasuke-teme, what's wrong?"

Sasuke simply fastened his hand to Naruto's upper thigh and left it there, in a hold so tight that Naruto thought that if he moved, his leg would separate from his body.

It must be a display of affection, however skewed Sasuke's perception of affection was.

"Sasuke, you're pinching...owowowowww."

Naruto watched Sasuke warily unhook his fingers from Naruto's bare leg. People were staring.

After they dejectedly scuttled off of the train like a pair of crabs, Naruto exhaled in relief.

"Thank God that's over with. Not God. I mean...Satan? How does that work, Sasuke-teme?"

Sasuke looked at him sideways and said nothing.

"Oh, Christ Sasuke, I mean come on. Oh, wait. I said it wrong again, didn't I?"

Naruto snorted with laughter. He thought he could see Sasuke's shoulders shaking along with his own.

When they finally arrived at Naruto's apartment, Sasuke finally spoke, but he didn't sound very happy.

"Naruto, who the fuck is that?"

The blond felt like he was going to throw up. If the night could get worse, it just did.

A pair of stoic, aquamarine eyes were glowing placidly out of the gloom on the front stoop. Blood-red hair had grown longer, shaggier since Naruto last saw it, bangs tangling with his eyelashes and the brushing against first vertebrae of his spine. It was still parted neatly, revealing a wide, eyebrowless forehead and a pitch black tattoo.

'Love.'

Naruto had dreams about it.

His clothes were as they always were. He was still wearing the same leather jacket that Naruto had last seen him in, along with a pair of tight black pants almost identical to the ones Sasuke was wearing, Naruto noticed, before they were accidentally shredded. His shoes were plain, his eyeliner dark, and Naruto noticed that there were more holes in his ears than he could count.

Gaara.

There was a cigarette hanging from his lips. It must have been a coincidence that they both smoked the same cigarette.

"Ano, uhh, Sasuke? This is Gaara. Gaara, meet Sasu-"

"Naruto."

Gaara's voice was dark, filled with malice even when he was laughing, smiling, fucking. Naruto felt a shiver go down his spine. He was too afraid to look at Sasuke's expression. Naruto watched the smoke ebb out of Gaara's mouth slowly, and Gaara, not oblivious to Naruto's stares, licked his lips. Sasuke growled.

"Naruto, why is he here?"

Naruto's tongue fumbled for an answer that didn't sound completely retarded or horrible.

/Sasuke, he's here because we have sex pretty regularly, I just never told you./

/Ne, Sasuke, we were friends in high school, he got me into cocaine!/

Before Naruto could find something appropriate to say, Gaara had already stood and brushed the thin film of dust off of the back of his jeans.

"I'm here because-"

Naruto grimaced as if he were in pain. The blond could tell what was coming. He knew because the last time Gaara came over, the red-head had spilled his guts about...well, everything. What he'd been doing, where he'd gone, and how he actually felt about Naruto.

"I love him."

Naruto could feel Sasuke bristle like a porcupine next to him.

"Naruto," Sasuke murmured under his breath. Naruto had never heard his voice so stern. "Is this true?"

"Sasuke-" Naruto choked out, but it was in vain. He couldn't find anything to say. His eyes were filled with tears.

"Hn."

And that was all. Sasuke turned his back to him, still wearing Naruto's pants, and simply walked away, the light from the street lamp shining off of his soft, black hair. Naruto remembered what it felt like under his fingers.

"Sasuke!" he called out desperately, but the raven did not turn. Naruto moved forward, as if to run to him, but an arm closed around his waist. Naruto couldn't break free. As much as he wanted his demon to come out, it wouldn't.

/Why, Kyuubi? Why won't you help me?/

"SASUKE! SASUKE, PLEASE!" But his last desperate cries were no match for the emptiness of the street. Sasuke was gone.

Naruto felt Gaara's lips against his ear.

"Teme..." Naruto whimpered, one last, lingering attempt to fix his heart, which felt like it was coming undone at the seams.

Gaara responded with a low, possessive snarl.

"Mine."

Naruto turned to face him, blue eyes shining and wet, before resting his head on Gaara's shoulder. Two, strong arms encircled him comfortingly, but there was little comfort to be had. They weren't Sasuke's.

Naruto flung his arms around Gaara's neck, his body wracked with sobs.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:** i'm sorry for the slow update you beautiful people! i dunno how good this chapter is, it's kind of surreal and confusing so if you have any questions just ask! i don't bite, unless you look tasty enough. ^^; implied gaanaru

**Disclaimer: **kishiee

His blue eyes opened to the darkness surrounding him, body crawling out from underneath the desolate covers, feeling nothing but a sickly sort of numbness in the pit of his stomach.

Before he could escape from the stark prison of his sheets, a hand closed sharply around his wrist, cold fingers scathing against his warm skin.

"Naruto. Where are you going?"

"Gaara, let me-"

"No."

Naruto pulled, watching as Gaara's feral, frozen eyes turned to meet his own, watering ones. Naruto wondered how they could look so dead, so emotionless against the pale plane of Gaara's stoic face, as if they didn't belong to something human. They reminded him of Sasuke's eyes when he first met him, filled with death and hurt that Naruto had never been able to imagine, but his body had grown receptive to because of his own demon's memories. The Kyuubi's experiences were slowly leaking into Naruto's thoughts now that he had given them an outlet, and they made him feel...angry.

This made him angry.

And all the while Gaara's features were contorted into a crazed, blood-thirsy smile.

"Let go."

Naruto's voice was not his own, but that of the being deep inside of him. He could visualize it now, a great, red animal locked and submissive behind barred walls in a large, empty room, shrouded in shadow. It's teeth shone terribly bright and yellow from inside a long, wolfish snout, black gums exposed in a snarl.

Naruto saw himself standing before it, hands clasped, pleading for power, needing it more than anything now. Needing it to live, to get away, to find Sasuke. He needed Sasuke.

The great beast shifted, tails whipping behind it like an angry brushfire, coming closer and closer to the seal that padlocked it's cage. Naruto was standing ankle deep in clear water that seemed to rise in temperature as his proximity to the demon increased, drew closer, until the gap between them was so minimal that he felt like he was burning. But he would not move.

"What do you want?" it asked, blinking it's great, fearsome eyes at him as if it had been disturbed from sleep.

"I need your power. Please, lend it to me?"

"Naruto, the years have made you weak. You have grown foolish. You think that you can use me in this way forever? I will destroy you."

But the demon looked at him, smiling in a subdued manner, and the water bubbled red. Naruto could feel it pierce him again, an all to familiar feeling that he had only experienced a few hours ago.

The Kyuubi had complied. Naruto could feel his body morphing, and when he opened his eyes again, they were no longer blue, but red. Gaara's face had morphed from one of intense possessiveness to one of pain, feeling his fingers burn from the heat his counterpart was generating. He hissed and pulled back.

"Naruto. What are you?" he asked, but his voice was flat, and all the incredulousness that should be there was missing, as though he knew that this was living in Naruto all along. And that was when it hit the blond. Gaara did know, and what was now standing before him was no longer the redhead that he had been a friend and lover to all his life, but something with an aura that only Kyuubi-Naruto could have sensed.

Naruto watched in disbelief as a thin layer of Gaara's skin started to crack and peel off like dry sand, to be replaced by tan skin and thin blue veins. His body bulked, and instead of the thin, subdued boy that was standing there before, stood a massive, ugly bear with a hulking arm, it's head brushing the ceiling. Two, small yellow eyes protruded from the great mask of it's face, with a mouth so large that Naruto could see straight down it's throat.

The blond recoiled in fright, about to flee to the corner of the room away from this creature that was sure to destroy him, until a small, hungry voice in his head whispered something that could have been a boyfriend's sweet nothing in his ear, had the words not been so blood-curdling.

"You can kill him, Naruto. Look at what I have given you."

Naruto felt the razor sharp teeth in his mouth with his tongue, and looked down at his hands. They were covered in a layer of red, bubbling fire. His vision was more acute, and he was certain that he could ascertain each flap of a fly's wings had there been one in front of him.

And he felt nothing but anger.

/I can.../ Naruto determined finally, waiting for the enormous sand panda to strike. /I can kill him, can't I?/

What he did then seemed like a blur, as his entire body lunged away from the mass of animal that spurred towards him. The Kyuubi-Naruto deftly sprung from his 16th floor apartment window and down onto the empty street below. He could hear the sound of crashing glass as Gaara barrelled out behind him. They left craters in the asphalt.

"Naruto," the bear crooned lovingly, Gaara's voice immensely distorted by the voice of his demon. "I was wondering how long it would take you to find out. You really can be a complete moron most of the time."

"Shut up," Naruto growled, watching sharply as Gaara circled him like a vulture zeroing in on prey already dead.

"I've been watching you for so long," he continued, licking his jagged teeth. "Of course, the Devil needed someone to keep tabs on you, to pluck you from the earth when the time was right, to let the Kyuubi out."

Naruto felt a wave of pain wash over him. Gaara had never actually loved him?

His anger grew. The fire about him swallowed more of his consciousness. He could hardly count the tails as they sprung from his body.

"Now it seems that you've harnessed it's power. Are you willing to test it?"

Naruto didn't need to respond. He pummeled forwards first, slamming into something hard and misshapen. It took him a moment to realize that it was a wall of sand that had been drawn from the creature's body and placed in front of it like a shield. Warm blood dripped into his eyelashes, but the pain did not register.

Gaara swung at him with a massive, clawed arm. Naruto shifted, but ended up falling flat on his face, sand wrapping around his ankles like restraints. The hand slammed into his back full force. Blood filled his throat, but the pain did not register. Anger had filled him to the brim. He knew it was over.

Naruto's fearsome eyes shifted into catlike slits and all he could do was scream. It was blood curdling, and a few lights in the apartments near by started to flicker on. He reached around and grabbed the thick fingers digging into his back, and with one fell swoop, flung Gaara across the pavement where he smashed heavily into the side of a building. Dust and screams filled the air.

Naruto wandered away from the scene with a wide, morbid smile on his bloody, whiskered face. His cat-like eyes fluttered shyly as he wondered how Sasuke would react to the headlines next morning.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note: **hi everyone! sorry this update is so overdue! i'd like to thank everyone for reviewing, agaiinn! it means a lot and i hope you don't hate me for taking a break from writing for a while. i've just been a little busy over the past week or two with college and everything. enjoy!

-Squeak

**Disclaimer:** Kishisss

He couldn't sleep, impossibly oblivious to the world around him, only choking on his own nightmare that seemed to swallow him whole in the darkness.

The sky was red, on fire, even, with two, vicious yellow eyes protruding from the smog. The eyes seemed to draw closer, closer, before the rest of the animal began to take shape. First, there was a paw, clawed and fearsome, black nails sharply digging into the hard earth beneath it as if it were butter. Next came the leg; Long and treacherous, covered in an orange fur and emitting a heat so insufferably hot that it burned his pale, whiskered cheeks. The rest of the creature came all at once, bounding through the dense fog, covered in an red, lava-like substance that almost looked like liquid floating in midair, the bubbles rising from it's back and dispersing into nothingness before re-emerging again.

It was snarling, nine, feral tails squirming like living things behind it, reminding the blond of a rogue brushfire. Black gums were pulled back harshly over long, yellow, blood-covered teeth.

"Naruto....." the creature quelled, mouth not moving but a deep, booming voice permeating from somewhere within itself.

Naruto said nothing, shrinking away from the vile beast and swallowing hard. He seemed to have lost his voice.

"Naru-chan, you need me. You need this. Come, take it."

The bubbles and lava advanced towards him, like a great, overflowing lake, tickling Naruto's ankles painfully. He resisted the urge to cry out, and he didn't even think that he could have if he wanted to.

"Naruto, you know why they don't like you. You know it's because of that "thing" inside of you. Me, inside of you."

Naruto felt a shiver crawl down his spine, unable to move any further. The lava had cemented him in place. The Kyuubi pressed it's black nose to Naruto's. He screamed in pain as a response.

"I won't!" He growled fiercely through the uncontrollable quavering in his voice, narrowing his wide, azure eyes in a new-found anger that was boiling in his stomach. "I don't need this! I don't need you!"

But it was already too late; The demon had seized him, and the anger that he thought was his own was in truth that of the nine-tailed fox, sidling into his body through his exposed pores. His blue eyes had gone red, turning into firey, cat-like slits, his canines extending over his bottom lip, cruelly drawing his own blood.

But before it could take him completely, deep, raven eyes snapped open. Sasuke had felt like he'd been swallowed by a dream, not that he really ever slept or needed to. He had simply been sitting, spine arched gently so that his hands came to rest on the curb, knees bent up to his chin, when all of a sudden images gripped him behind the blackness of his eyelids...Not only had Sasuke encountered the thing inside of Naruto; He had become him.

But why? What sort of premonition was this? He was still dressed in Naruto's tattered orange jeans and shirtless, and the sun was starting to peek over the buildings effortlessly, sparkling delicately in the listless fog from the previous rain. Sasuke was soaked, but since when did the cold bother him? His blood had always been blue.

/Was it a sign? Had something happened to Naruto?/

/Hell, what the fuck did it matter? He was Gaara's now. Gaara. A red-headed piece of shit that seemed to have sand stuck permanently in his asshole. /

/Jealous? Ne, Sasuke. How can you, one of the most powerful demons in your verse, succumb to such a human emotion?/

/But if you aren't jealous, if you don't love him, then why are you afraid to go back to Hell?/

Sasuke swallowed and lifted his head slowly. He felt like there was something burning in his eyes, which had grown very wet and confusingly uncomfortable.

/Am I crying?/

He brought his hands to his forehead and grabbed fist-fulls of wet hair as his shoulders shook methodically. Demons weren't supposed to cry. Had he grown weak? So many questions were branding themselves into his mind, dying to be answered, but only tearing his soul apart more with each passing minute. Naruto, Naruto, Naruto.

/Soul? What soul?/

He was almost shocked when a pair of feet and two wheels squealed to a stop in front of him. Two, black, tattered converse sneakers padded up the sidewalk to greet him, the gray, soggy laces dragging languidly across the wet pavement.

"Hey, you! Are you alright? Huh? What happened? You look sick! Are you crying? Hey!"

The voice belonged to a little boy, probably twelve years of age. Sasuke turned his head towards him and looked up ashamedly. The kid had brown hair that looked like it was the product of sticking his finger in an electrical socket, and on his forehead rested a pair of enormous green goggles that appeared to have no function other than to look cool. The blue scarf around his neck trailed down to his ankles, and was obviously in danger of being stepped on or caught in his bike spokes. He was holding a heavy looking bag filled with newspapers.

"What happened to you! You look like shit!" the boy squeaked, laughing and dropping his bundle off of his right shoulder, before plopping down next to Sasuke and stretching. Sasuke was puzzled by the boy's bluntness. He couldn't help but be reminded of his stupid, blond Dobe again.

"You've got one hell of a mouth," Sasuke snapped, resting his head in his hands.

"Hey, it's not my fault you're down in the dumps. Want some candy? I've got hi-chews."

Before Sasuke could respond there was an apple piece of candy in his hand. He unwrapped it slowly and chewed. It didn't taste too bad...At least there was something human (besides sex) that he could stomach.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?" Sasuke said, chomping away, giving the brown-haired boy a sideways glance.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to take candy from them, either?" the boy replied, grinning cheekily and stuffing a pink-colored one in his mouth.

"What kind was that?" Sasuke inquired.

"Strawberry. Here." The boy handed him another one. Sasuke unwrapped it and popped it onto his tongue.

"What happened to your clothes?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"You're just a kid."

"Fine."

Sasuke, expecting more persistence from such a young boy, looked at him with a pair of surprised, open eyes. The boy shrugged.

"I'm Konohamaru," the boy offered between mouthfuls of candy.

"Sasuke."

"You know, whatever is bothering you probably isn't such a big deal. You know, none of this really matters in the end, Sasuke."

"Pretty deep words for someone like you."

"Hey, kids can be a lot smarter than you think. We're more open. You see the world the way /you/ want it to be. I can imagine the way it /really/ is."

Sasuke looked at him tentatively, dropping his candy wrapper on the ground and blinking at Konohamaru curiously.

"Take todays paper, for example," Konohamaru continued, pulling one of the rolled up newspapers out of his bag. "Something weird happened not too far from here. The papers say it was a bomb. I think it's something different. Something....Out of this world. People just want to convince themselves that they are the center of the universe, that they're the only things out there, and that strange, extraordinary things can't happen because that's not reality. But, the thing is," he said, pausing for a moment to rip open the paper to the appropriate page. "-they don't realize that extraordinary things /are/ reality. Look."

Sasuke peered over Konohamaru's shoulder, genuinely intrigued by the young boy's advanced philosophy. The picture shocked him. An entire half of an apartment complex had caved in, the rubble extending to the other side of the street. There was old blood on the cement, and a single body in the foreground covered with a pristine, white sheet, which looked out of place because of the filth that encompassed the road. The brief article read as follows, which Sasuke muttered aloud:

"Four AM e.s.t., an apartment complex just outside of Chinatown was demolished by what appeared to be a makeshift bomb, although no evidence of the bomb or who planted it there has been relinquished to the public. Only one death has been reported, but that name has also not been released. Very little is known about the surprise attack, but an eye-witness we will call 'John' for safety's sake, characterized the scene as, "...strange, something I had never seen in my life. It didn't sound like a bomb, really. Just...Snarling. Almost like a wild animal was out there. I thought I had been dreaming, but then my ceiling fell in," (he chuckles goodnaturedly). "I came outside to see what had happened, but there was nothing but blood on the ground. That and the pavement had been smashed in in two places. It almost looked like there had been some apocalyptic fight! Seriously!" A young man currently residing in the apartment complex was also missing when the individual residents were questioned, but neither him, nor his body could be located."

Sasuke swallowed as the picture grew more and more familiar by the second. That was Naruto's apartment. Sasuke's jaw dropped and he turned to his right, a million questions for Konohamaru springing up invasively in his mind.

But he was even more bewildered to find the bike, the papers, and the boy gone.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note: **i'm pretty sure this chapter is crappily written, but i was a little distracted by thanksgiving and everything and i typed each section separately on the bus ride from NYC to Boston and on the car ride back from New Hampshire after dinner. so. yes.

**Disclaimer: **Kishi

The air had grown cold and thin, catching in Naruto's lungs. He was laying on his back in the brown, dead grass, a swing set nearby creaking as the chains swung back and fourth in the wind. The sky was a pale, pale blue, almost white, with gray, whispy clouds that clung to the earth in layers. From where he was, Naruto felt like he could almost touch the ones closest to him, feel them in his fingers, the tips bloody where his claws had broken through. He was at peace, immersed in the curvature of the world.

His eyes were glassy, the reflection of the disappearing, muted sun burning red to match his irises, which had never returned to their natural aquamarine because Naruto hadn't fully escaped Kyuubi's clutches. He still felt it there, waiting for the slightest thing to upset him.

Naruto couldn't describe how he felt at that moment. He felt like...Everything. He had attained enlightenment. He was one with himself, one with God, one with the world. He was the sky, the dirt, and the cold metal of the swing. He was death, a smile, hatred, the voice of a bitter old man who felt as though his life had been wasted. He was the universe, he was Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. He was everything at once, no longer Uzumaki Naruto, but pure self.

He felt his throat tighten as his peace was destroyed by a single thought that he couldn't refute. Something his heart ached for and his mind couldn't deny. The yin to his yang. Uchiha Sasuke.

His broken fingers clutched the dead earth on either side of him, and he let out a low, harried moan. He was disappointed in himself. He had fallen from enlightenment to worthlessness in under a second. Where was God when you needed him? And no matter how much he prayed, Naruto knew there was no saving himself now. There never had been, not with this deranged beast of an animal inside of him. So many lives he'd been through...Is that why he felt so old? Where had those years gone? He wished he could remember them. They must have been beautiful.

He had finally arrived at his fall from grace. After thousands of years, he would soon be killed and this monster removed from him, to destroy and enslave the world.

"Naruto!"

He thought he heard something on the wind in the distance, but he refused to open his crimson eyes. It all never really mattered anyway. What were memories to someone who was already dead? Dead, without Sasuke, dead. He had no one to protect him from Hell and the torture he was sure to come with it.

"Naruto! Where are you?"

/Shut up, stupid fucking brain. You can't trick me anymore. I'm on my way to the sun./

"I feel you! Where are you!? Naruto!"

He brought his bleeding fingers to his ears and covered them, sobs choking his throat.

"Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!" he whispered to himself miserably, the fire in his stomach growing unbearable again, the fox growling awake from it's light slumber.

"Dobe!"

/Huh?/

"Naruto-dobe! Are you hurt? I can't find you! Answer me!"

That voice- It had grown desperate. But Naruto couldn't believe that it was really him. He couldn't bring himself through that kind of pain. It was worse than his leaking, congealing gashes.

He heard the chain-link fence rattle and a pair of feet crush the dry grass nearby.

/No. You're not real. You can't save me./

That's when Naruto felt him, his abnormally cold fingers on the side of his own abnormally hot neck, his trembling voice, his body arched possessively over Naruto's limp figure.

The blond opened his eyes.

"N-Naruto. I'm so sorry."

"Sasuke?"

"I'm here. I swear to God, I'm here."

Sasuke's palms cupped the sides of his face, obviously perturbed at the red eyes that blinked up at him miserably.

"The seal is breaking..." Sasuke muttered, swallowing nervously. "He already knows."

Naruto winced and hissed as Sasuke brushed his fingers over a fresh cut.

"Who knows?" Naruto asked, trying to be optimistic despite the obvious signs that all pointed to the answer.

"Hell knows."

Naruto smiled at Sasuke's little joke, and Sasuke smirked back.

"We're in this together now," Sasuke quelled, his hands shaking as he placed one on the back of Naruto's neck and the other over his heart. Naruto found Sasuke's bone-chilling temperature comforting. Without him, he felt like he was on fire.

"Promise you won't leave me again?" he asked. Even his voice sounded injured. He watched Sasuke's coal-black eyes melt as the question strangled him.

"Never."

Sasuke pressed his lips against Naruto's, his black curtain of hair shielding their faces from the cruel days to come.

---

She ruffled through her papers a little too quickly, the motion a little labored, jerky, nervous. There was a thin line of perspiration on her wide-set forehead, her brow slightly wrinkled as she slowly began to lose composure.

"Haruno."

She felt her temple throb as her name was spoken, a few more pink hairs coming loose from her pony tail.

"Yes?" she squeaked, obviously struggling to hold her own as she continued to fret over documents that she'd already gone over twice before, just looking for a distraction, anything to keep her mind off of

"-Sasuke."

"Huh, what? What about him?"

"Were you even listening to anything I just said?" The voice was low, growling, and belonged to a male. His 's's lingered so long that it sounded reminiscent of hissing snakes. Sakura hated his voice, but for some reason, she couldn't get away from it. Not while Uchiha Sasuke was around. Leaving him would be...Torture.

"Ano, ahh, no, sir, I'm sorry. I'm just a little distracted today."

"Hn, distracted? Why is that?"

Pale, thin fingers snaked icily across her throat. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, the chill spreading through her blood and seizing her heart. She felt like she couldn't breathe. He had never touched her before.

She had watched when he touched Sasuke, his prized pupil, how Sasuke's eyes remained black and nonplussed as if nothing was happening, nothing but the Devil's filthy hands and eyes all over him.

And his tongue.

Sakura shivered, and shook the hand off of her shoulder. He huffed as if he were miffed. She didn't dare turn around and look.

"Where is Sasuke?"

Sakura swallowed and continued to sift through he papers.

"I don't know, I haven't seen him."

She felt her lie settle around her in the air.

"Sakura-chan...I know you know where he is. Just tell me."

His fingers caught under her chin just as the oily words met her ears, She gasped at the sensation, which was just short of painful this time. He lifted her face to meet his, which was now hovering a few inches away. His eyes were yellow, snakelike, and although she had seen them a thousand times before, today, they were different. It was as if they were pained, scared, furious, and he was trying to mask it all. Why?

But Sakura didn't even have to ask that question. Uchiha Sasuke did things to people- human or demon alike. He had the power to captivate them just by being, and he knew it. Sakura, the Devil, and this new, strange Fox-demon she'd never met all had one thing in common. They were eaten alive by Sasuke. He was beautiful.

But the things that separated the three of them were all different. For Sakura, it was simple: Sasuke didn't want a girlfriend. He had been married once, he had killed his wife, and now he turned away from women forever. Sure, they fed him, but he did not love them, and he never would. For Lucifer, the problem was also blatant. The Devil wanted him, and he owned him; Uchiha's one and only master, but somehow, he was still completely out of his control. Sasuke did whatever he desired, got whatever he wanted, and that was because the Devil himself had fallen for him. No lover wants to tame their beloved, especially something so abominably handsome as Sasuke. But the affection was not mutual. Sasuke had no reaction to any of his master's advances, and his stony outlook on the matter seemed to drive the Devil crazy. He loved it. For Naruto, (Sakura had studied his files in depth), she wasn't very sure, but there was one thing she could be certain of. Sasuke /needed/ him. She knew she was right, as much as she didn't want to believe it. He had finally found that special someone, the person who was right for him. A perfect fit.

And looking into those yellow, slitted eyes, she knew that it was the truth.

"Sir-"

"Call me Orochimaru. Lets drop formalities, Sakura." His voice had grown serious and filled with want, his pallid face growing even paler, if that had even been possible. He continued.

"You know as well as I do that Sasuke is growing...Distant. He won't listen to me."

"As if he ever did..."

There was a loud slap and a cracking sound as Sakura flew across the room, blood squirting mercilessly from her mouth and lips, staining the back of Orochimaru's hand.

"Insolent girl! You listen to me. I gave you a second chance, and this is how you repay me?" He walked slowly towards her collapsed, twitching form. Her green eyes had rolled back into her head and was lolling listlessly between her shoulders.

He wrapped his fingers around her neck and she groaned, her eyelids fluttering as she came to.

"Where is Sasuke?"

"He- He-"

"Tell me, " he growled, raising his hand again.

"Uzumaki Naruto. He's with a boy named Uzumaki Naruto."

It took a moment for her slurred words to register, and she looked up at his bewildered, confused face. It was mixed with a number of emotions, as if he was so unused to having them he didn't know which one to pick.

"Hn," he muttered, finally settling for a feeling that made him smile. "Uzumaki Naruto, you say? This could turn out very well, for me. You? Well...When Sasuke finds out that you squealed-" (he couldn't help but giggle with cruel joy) "- your life will be over."

"N-no. Not Sasuke. He wouldn't."

"After Uzumaki is dead, I'm sure he will."

And with that, he turned and made his way to the door, Sakura dragging her body with her arms behind him, face bruised and covered in congealing blood.

"Wait! After all these years of service, you won't spare me?"

He stopped then, a hand on the doorframe and one on the knob. He turned his head to look at her maliciously, his black hair falling in a long blanket of his shoulder.

"Spare you? Sakura-Chan, I know how you feel about Sasuke-kun. We'll just call this...Eliminating the competition."

He vanished, the door slamming behind him and his retreating footsteps echoing down the cavernous hall outside.

A defeated Sakura rested her broken face against the cold, stone floor, body curling inward in defeat.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke. I failed you."

A single tear graced her cheek and mingled with the gore there.


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Note: **sorry this chapter has been so long in coming, i've had a hard time writing it but i think i sorted out the kinks and have figured out a way to end the story cohesively. tell me what you think!!

-squeak

**Disclaimer:** keesheeDUHH

He pushed his glasses up with his forefinger so they sat comfortably on the bridge of his nose and uncrossed his legs. His eyes focused on the young-looking man sitting next to him to find a pair of sharp, beautiful eyes staring dully back.

"Why do you think he finally called us?" he asked, twirling a finger in the gray pony-tail that curled softly around his neck.

"It is not a question of why, Kabuto-kun. Orochimaru-sama called and we answered, and that is all. We do not ask questions; we are only obedient slaves to his will."

Kabuto huffed and shifted his position for the umpteenth time.

"But you have to be at least a /little/ bit curious, Kimimaro..."

"No. Whatever he asks of me, I will do without complaint. So what does the nature of the task even matter?"

---

"My son is dead."

Her pale fingers grasped the edge of her chair, a pair of familiar, empty azure eyes glimmering in the darkness. She looked up at the old, tired woman from her seat, her voice small and pleading.

There was a young, pretty blond sitting to the woman's right, also looking tentatively up at the elder with a pained interest.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" the blond asked, shifting her weight miserably, waiting, pleading with a different set of eyes but a face that was remarkably familiar as well.

A male's voice chimed in. He had gone seemingly unnoticed in the shadows towards the back of the old woman's living room.

"Chiyo," he began, his voice low and growling. "You put that goddamn thing in my brother and now he's dead. We know there's more to you than meets the eye. Bring him back."

The woman known as Chiyo sighed heavily, bringing a wrinkled set of fingers to her temples and rubbing them sullenly.

"Had you known what Gaara had done for a living-" Her thin voice hardly carried over the thick din of her home.

"I don't care what he did, he's still my son and that's not the reason he's dead! Fix it, Chiyo-baasama! Please!" The mother collapsed over her knees, sobbing with her head in her hands.

Chiyo closed her eyes, knowing what she was resigned to do. A few hours later, in a morgue on a plain, white sheet, Gaara's eyes opened.

---

Sasuke sat stiff as stone next to Naruto's feverish body, watching him sleep. His wings were folded neatly against his back, tails writhing against the sheets uncomfortably. Naruto's room was dark, the way Sasuke liked most places, but he now found it stifling.

He had asked Naruto if he would mind if he assumed his demon form when they were alone, his reasoning being that he needed to protect him while he was wounded in case something happened. Hell's warriors could strike at any time, and they both needed to be as prepared as they could. After Sasuke had turned, he tucked his Dobe safely underneath the covers and smoothed the blond locks off of his sweat-soaked brow soothingly, trying to calm Naruto down. He knew the internal struggle Naruto faced, but he couldn't fathom the pain and hatred that seemed to be swallowing him. It was probably, by-far worse than anything he had ever endured, in Hell or out of it.

A pair of bright, fire-orange optics slowly opened, the lids separating to reveal the watery, pained irises. Flecks of Naruto's natural blue eye color were speckled here and there, but only Sasuke's quick, perceptive senses would have noticed. Only a bright flash of aquamarine occasionally, and for a split-second, signified to Sasuke that Naruto was still in there somewhere.

When Naruto spoke, Sasuke felt chills curling down his spine, the hair on the back of his neck pricked. The raven had not known genuine fright for a long, long time. It was like something out of a horror movie, the Exorcist, the way his voice quavered between two pitches. There were hints of Naruto's scratchy, obnoxious drawl still in there, but completely immersed in the sound of the great fox demon welling up inside of him, bubbling over the edges. Sasuke felt like screaming.

"Ohhh, Sasuke-temeee," the vile voice called as if far away. Sasuke's hand recoiled from Naruto's forehead almost instantly, as if he had been burnt. It was plausible, the heat exuding from Naruto's body almost unbearable for the ice prince.

"What do you want," Sasuke snarled, too mortified to look at Naruto's contorted face. The whisker lines on his tanned cheeks had grown, opening into practically gaping wounds. Sasuke felt a set of sharp, razor-like claws caressing his back tentatively.

" 'suke, why won't you look at me? Am I ugly now?"

Sasuke didn't respond.

"Poor little Naruto wants to tell you something, Sasuke. He wants to tell you how much he loves you, and he's sorry that it had to end this way. With him dying and all."

Sasuke felt anger well up inside him, his leathery wings spreading as he tried to calm himself. If he fought, it would be Naruto he was hurting. He felt helpless. Useless.

"Naruto," Sasuke growled, lips curled over his menacing teeth. "You can control it. I know you can."

The Kyuubi chuckled and let his sharp nails slice through the already tattered material of Sasuke's shirt. Sasuke felt a slight sting, and a wetness with a scent that his keen nose recognized as blood.

"Naruto!"

Sasuke was screaming now.

"Naruto! Naruto please! The fucking Dobe I know would never give up this easily!"

The Kyuubi's smile began to falter, the corners of his mouth twitching, seemingly concerned.

Sasuke, placing his own clawed hands on Naruto's shoulders, shook him roughly.

"NA-RU-TO."

"SA-SU-KE."

The raven stopped, recognizing the familiar, higher pitch of that voice; his Dobe's voice.

"Fuck, are you alright?"

Naruto looked up at him, dazed, one eye blue and one eye red. Sasuke smirked.

"You look stupid," but Sasuke couldn't help but notice the new bulge of Naruto's muscles, the purpose in his off-kilter eyes, the sharp teeth that protruded over his lower lip.

And his nine, writhing tails.

"I'm fine. I feel great, actually..."

"You're so stupid, Dobe."

There was a long, tense pause.

"Do you feel them, Sasuke?"

The raven averted his pitch-black eyes and focused them on the floor.

"Yes."

"We don't have very long."

"We're in this together."

---

The two, silver-haired men stood, one pressing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, the other chomping on a pretzel that he'd acquired from a street-vendor.

"Kimimaro-kun?"

"Mmpfhh."

"I sense that the Kyuubi's power has somehow been contained. Uzumaki is stronger than we thought."

"Not strong enough, Kabuto. You seem to forget who I am."

"But even you, in your condition-"

"Silence. Pretzel?"

Kabuto sighed heavily as a large piece of bread and salt was shoved harshly into his mouth.

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch, Kabu-kun. We must do what we were sent to do. Kill Uzumaki Naruto...And if you don't have it in you, I'm sure I can do it just fine."

Kabuto, a miffed expression on his face because of the verbal "Oro-love" onslaught from Kimimaro, (the sex must be better for them), chewed resolutely on the pretzel that had been stuffed between his teeth.

"But," Kabuto interjected, sound muffled by the food. "he will have the Uchiha with him, and Hell knows who else-"

"The Uchiha will be taken care of," Kimimaro growled, eyes flaming with jealousy.

"There are a number of things I want to do with him."


End file.
